Board Thread:General Wiki Discussion/@comment-24376429-20140412002355/@comment-24463401-20140413045232

The Bitter Cold wrote: ImGonnaBeThatGuy wrote: Why is communication between wiki members necessary? What does it provide that can be done through talk pages or, if you really want to talk to your friends, a hundred other methods available elsewhere on the internet?

Chat is, generally, something used by MAYBE 75 different users a day? Even that number seems high, but for the sake of argument let's bump it up even more. Let's say it's 100 people a day. Let's also keep in mind, that it's usually the same 100 people every day.

On average, we have 300,000 visits a day (this is just going off the past 7 days).

So, most people don't give any kind of shit about chat. They don't use it for communication of any kind, they don't have friends in there, they don't view it as some kind of super tight-knit community, it's not the only reason they come here. It doesn't matter to them.

If the vast, vast, vast majority of visitors to this site don't care about chat why do we need it? The site won't be destroyed because we lose 100 people. Active users haven't had any problems communicating in the last two weeks, so it won't cause some sort of breakdown.

But the crazy thing is that the smallest part of our site causes so much bullshit. And Bitter, I know you're saying, "Then just solve the problems." But why? Chat users are such a small fraction of the site that the simplest solution is just getting rid of it. It's a matter of convenience. You could leave a message on someone's talk page and wait for them to get around to replying, or you can just stop by the chat, ask a question, shoot the breeze, and be on your way. The fact that certain members abuse the chat by using it to seek attention is sad, but removing a tool that can be used responsibly because you're - and I use this term broadly - afraid of these persons is arguably sadder. Talk pages are probably less helpful than emails, which is less helpful than skype, which is less helpful than a chat on the actual site.