A shout box, not a chat box

[ZeroTheSaint]

I'll be honest with you, i've always been a person to think outside the box...I have thought inside the box maybe once or twice but that suffocates my brain to much...

But i'm glad that I can be a part of the site and at least find a way to help make it function better. Plus i'm really hoping that i'm not pestering you at all. One of the things I hate the most is when I bother someone too much...having ADHD is bad enough... "

[XHunter]

Don't worry, you are not boring anyone, well me at least.

[PhantomBen]

We need a Shout Box =D

In order to make more friend here and meet each other
I know that a Shout Box would increase the activity and the forum.
Because it is a way to spend time here
while other people posts something

[VileMKII]

The only issue with shout boxes is that it can take away from forum posting.

[PhantomBen]

When you say "posting" you mean "spam"?

Because in a shout box you can write everything without being spam (Sorry for my bad english n_nu)

[Viruszero]

Well, shoutboxes do attract some spam since they're easier to post in than a forum. (Anti-spam measures for forums are a lot stronger than for shoutboxes.) It means that sometimes shoutboxes can get flooded. Though they have options to clean up after the mess, it's still not a fun thing to do.
Though they can be useful for members to talk in near real time with each other ( without having to go on an instant messaging client.)
But as Vile said, they can also detract from the posting. You may end up with people spending more time in the shoutbox than actually on the forum. And that's not exactly helpful for the forum. (It just makes things look dead and that can scare away potential members.)

[PhantomBen]

[Viruszero]

Sorry, but some shoutboxes don't show who or how many are online and they only show messages that were posted when the person visited the page. So any new messages that people post won't show up until the person refreshes the page or consciously click the refresh button on the shoutbox. Meaning that people won't see the activity unless they click for it. (And if they don't see anything new on the forum they may just close it out/leave.)

But if the forum is what people are looking at and they see no posts there then it doesn't matter how active a shoutbox is because they see nothing going on, on the forum. The forum should be the key focus, not a shoutbox. Shoutboxes don't tend to attract activity, they tend to detract from it if over used. (I've seen this happen before.)

Now if you have a cbox or chatango set up, those are slightly different. (Chatango especially since it uses flash and it does show who is online, how long they've been on, it auto refreshes and all that lovely stuff as well. Cbox, like a shoutbox, won't show new messages unless you press refresh on it, refresh the page or enter a message yourself. And even then it doesn't show who is online... Unless you pay for a year license of premium cbox, in which case it shows who's online and has autorefresh.) But even still they tend to detract more from a site if people spend all the time chatting on it and not making use of the forum...

[Silvershard]

You know I used to be pro-shout box. But I think we are able to make up for it on the rare occasions that we used to do RAMV group chats on IM.