Board Thread:General Wiki Discussion/@comment-4832646-20140719071615/@comment-10950063-20140720180051

ChaoZStrider wrote: Chat allows people to answer and ask questions and get an instant response to them. However, with the current staff for chat(being the chat moderators) Chat will never get better, as the people who watch over it are a part of the problem. The natural election process tried to fix this but it failed. While some chat moderators do their job amazingly, they do it amazingly but are still shitty mods. Some mods/admins shouldn't have power of chat or even of any people.

Chat can be used to get help on pastas, to collaborate with other writers, to talk with like minded people, or to even just have someone to talk to. Chat is a wonderful and amazing tool that can amazingly if managed and used correctly. Sadly, it isn't managed correctly. I don't think it ever will be managed correctly. -People can come and get help instantly.

-People can collaborate on stories and get help.

These are the two things that always get brought up when people are defending chat and they don't hold a lot of weight.

First, as Fatal brought up, a lot of times users with questions get completely drowned out and ignored. Do they sometimes get answered, yeah, sure, but there are other ways to get answers. Ways that don't involve hoping to be heard over discussions of horse dicks or music arguments. Are they, potentially, as fast? No, but there are very few questions about this wiki that are super urgent.

Second, we now have the writer's workshop. Any help that can be given in chat, can be given much more effectively on the forums. That's really all there is to it. Instead of getting one person's opinion, you can set your pasta out and get multiple. The advice also doesn't disappear when the chat window gets closed.

As for these collaborations, this always gets brought up. ALWAYS. I've never seen one. If it's such a big reason for keeping chat, there should be a ton. I would be surprised if anyone could show me 10 examples of co-authored stories.