Moderated Chat Feedback

[Charles]

One feature we want to add in a future version of IP.Chat is the ability for a moderated chat.

The example is something like you are a fan site, say music related, and a member of the band your site is about is going to come and do a guest chat session. You would want to moderate that chat so it's not a complete, confusing mess.

There are many ways to implement such a system. What are your ideas? Mockups, feature lists, implementation ideas are all welcome. We have our own ideas but want to see what everyone here thinks since it can be done in many different ways.

Thanks!

[Lewis P]

Very simple thought.

Chat messages can be unapproved or approved. When moderated mode it turned on, all chat messages posted become unapproved, you can then approve the messages that you want to show, or delete them if you do not (there will not be a js prompt to make sure or anything.. Literally a very quick delete icon, click, bam, gone).

Members have a 10 second delay before sending another message to stop spamming in the chat. There is a message at the top of the chat saying it is moderated, please wait for your message to appear etc.

You get the idea. Simple thoughts, but I reckon you guys can execute it well.

[texterted]

Further mod options on clicking a users name including delete all posts.

[Carl M]

If you have a member behaving inappropriately maybe we should be able to set a ban length of say for instance (or in hours)

1 day
3 days
7 days
30 days etc

So that you can quickly ban a member without having to remember that you will need to access the ACP to unban the member in Chat in X number of days etc.

[OrahChris]

The ability to shut everyone up and allow only one person you select to chat would be nice. :D

[Mark]

I think what Charles meant was how do you think it would be best to implement the specific feature he mentioned.

If you have other feature ideas for IP.Chat we still want to hear them, but make a new topic ;)

[Dll]

I was hoping you may be considering this type of option as having installed ipchat recently (it's very good btw - simple but effective) we thought it would be great to have special guests etc within a chat session but obviously would need some way of stopping it from being a free for all.

One way which perhaps could work I think would be to have a sort of pre-moderation system on there whereby users (in a certain usergroup?) can post their questions/comments but they then sit in a separate moderation area only viewable by moderators who then select the comments which can go through to the main chat room?

[Charles]

I was hoping you may be considering this type of option as having installed ipchat recently (it's very good btw - simple but effective) we thought it would be great to have special guests etc within a chat session but obviously would need some way of stopping it from being a free for all.

One way which perhaps could work I think would be to have a sort of pre-moderation system on there whereby users (in a certain usergroup?) can post their questions/comments but they then sit in a separate moderation area only viewable by moderators who then select the comments which can go through to the main chat room?

Thought about that but I am thinking that a forum topic might be the best for that since that's what the forum is good at :)

[KeithK]

I agree with DII in that a moderated chat should be a live event. You can use the forum to promote the interview and have some predefined questions come up but attendees would want to be able to interact with the guest(s)live.

It would need a main panel for the live chat and a queued panel where the attendee's comments and questions would stay until the moderator pulled them over. The number of questions per person being configurable with the ability of the poster to remove a question and replace it at the bottom of the queue. The queue panel could be viewed by attendees or not. The guest(s) should have the option to either plus (request) or minus (refuse) a question with the moderators being the only ones who can see this. The moderator should have the option of pulling the question and/or the user who posted it into the live chat.

[Michael R]

I love the new Chat and will be upgrading to the 20 user version soon!

One feature I had in my old Chat app when I was on 2.X were sound effects. I know they can be somewhat annoying and most folks here probably don't care for them, but my members really love them! My site has a very specific theme and members really got a kick out of the sound effects I made available.

Just a suggestion. :D

[bfarber]

Chat supports sound notifications for enter, leave, and new message. What other sound effects are you referring to?

[Collin1000]

On topic here, Ive used "moderated chat" before (AddonChat I think it was)

The way it was setup was that every chat posted was put in a "holding queue"


* For interview style (as you mentioned) the moderator would just approve the "best" question in the holding queue, let the famous person answer, and then approve a new question, let him answer.... repeat process as needed. As was mentioned, it should be 1 click. No refreshing, no prompts, just click and done.

* For regular moderated style, the same system applies... "holding queue" that a moderator approves or disapproves each post, but usually in a much more rapid fire session, sitting there approving/disapproving each as they are made.


In both cases, as someone mentioned above, Flood Control is a critical feature.

[Ali Majrashi]

i just install the chat app but it need many improvement for the chat moderate
plz add many chat moderate level something like :shifty:

1. room moderator (he can moderate specific room with specific option like kick out ,ban, change user room etc
2. chat moderate (he can do whatever room moderate can do including ability to create room and fully manage it
3. super moderate (he can do whatever chat room moderate can do and he can assign moderate for rooms and manage moderator als he can manage the chat fully without accessing the ACP :whistle:

the more options and restriction is good for any chat app i use www.prochatrooms.com and it's have many great options but the integrations is very basic :ermm:

[karen65]

An emergency 'blank screen' system would be useful to completely wipe out the conversation on the screen. Albeit very rarely, we do occasionally have idiots posting illegal links, and the ability to be able to zap the entire conversation history at a push of a button would be useful. It would also be useful if somebody has said something that they regretted (yes, I am thinking Friday / Saturday night posting here!) The only alternative at present is to mass flood the chat until the offending message is cleared.

[OrahChris]

An emergency 'blank screen' system would be useful to completely wipe out the conversation on the screen. Albeit very rarely, we do occasionally have idiots posting illegal links, and the ability to be able to zap the entire conversation history at a push of a button would be useful. It would also be useful if somebody has said something that they regretted (yes, I am thinking Friday / Saturday night posting here!) The only alternative at present is to mass flood the chat until the offending message is cleared.

BIG +1 to this.

[Bryan Sammers]

That's the most basic I can think of:

1. Text of moderators is always displayed
2. The created text of regular users is always displayed both on their own chat window and submitted to the moderators
3. Text of regular users are only displayed to other regular users, if the moderator just clicks on the regular users text message

[rbiss]

I agree with DII in that a moderated chat should be a live event. You can use the forum to promote the interview and have some predefined questions come up but attendees would want to be able to interact with the guest(s)live.

It would need a main panel for the live chat and a queued panel where the attendee's comments and questions would stay until the moderator pulled them over. The number of questions per person being configurable with the ability of the poster to remove a question and replace it at the bottom of the queue. The queue panel could be viewed by attendees or not. The guest(s) should have the option to either plus (request) or minus (refuse) a question with the moderators being the only ones who can see this. The moderator should have the option of pulling the question and/or the user who posted it into the live chat.

Keith I think has nailed it. I'm in the process of trying to pick/find a chat program where up to a hundred or more people would be online for scheduled medical chats. A specialist would have approximately 1 hour to answer questions. However, it's difficult to see 20 questions arrive at once, or to ask someone for a question then wait 2 minutes for them to type it. If 'moderated" chatters could have their chats sent to a queue where the admin could select from it would make it fast and friendly.

With that situation though we'd want the scheduled expert to be unmoderated but not have him/her see the queue list.

[rbiss]

Any developments on moderated features?

[bfarber]

When we have information to share, we will (most likely through the company blog).

[rbiss]

I would pick up the 250 user version today if I knew it would have moderation tools in the near certain future. If it's just wait and see indefinitely I'll need to look at something else.

[bfarber]

I would pick up the 250 user version today if I knew it would have moderation tools in the near certain future. If it's just wait and see indefinitely I'll need to look at something else.

We can't really guarantee when the moderated chat features will be added unfortunately.

[Fisherking]

a mostly desired feature!!!! Please come with it quickly

[InvisionNutCase]

can you have the names of the chatter's linkable like in shout?

also for the moderator function, just have a checkbox to not show a uses chat line if it is in appropriate...

and finally, a program called tinychat that i use on my board allows a 1-on-1 connection for a truly private session, can ipchat have that as well? implement as an ajax box with the options there...

anxiously awaiting the new upgrades...

[Shrimpkid]

The option to voice and devoice certain users would be very helpful just like in IRC. :)

[prupdated]

The option to voice and devoice certain users would be very helpful just like in IRC. :)

That's probably an easy way to get it started. When the room is moderated, anyone who comes in that's not a moderator, can only see messages, but can't post.

The moderators then just enable which users they want to talk. Perhaps just a toggle by clicking on the user names in the chat window along with kick, ban, etc.

Although, there probably needs to be a moderated queue. People who can't talk in the channel have all their messages go in a single queue window that only the mods can see. Private message windows would be too much if there are a large number of people.

That way the mods can know who to let talk based on what they're saying, or what the question is. Otherwise if you have a meeting of say 50 people, you don't really know who to give voice to if you don't know what they might be wanting to say.


So, I would think these things are needed, at least to get something like this started:

1. A toggle ideally in the room (rather than ACP) for the mods to switch the mode to moderated mode.
2. All non moderators then can not talk in the channel. But can view it. When moderated mode goes off, everyone can talk again.
3. Any messages they do try to type, go into a single window that only the mods can see. Or perhaps they would type their message in that other window. But they could only see their messages.
4. The moderators would toggle who to talk and who not to talk. Ideally on a per user basis so it could be multiple people talking.
5. Optionally, turn off private messaging while this is going on. Or at least, only enable it if moderators initiate it. Otherwise, it might get overwhelming if too many people are messaging during this. I think this function is already in ACP. But it might be easier to have some of that accessible in the chat page for moderators to see. So perhaps just a temporary toggle between the way it is in the ACP to just no private messages unless initiated by moderators.