Improving NIWA

[tacopill]

We have a NIWA chatroom on Skype. Why do we need another chatroom on IRC?

IRC is technically more open, since you can just go to the web page, and there it is.

However, i personally think Skype is better, since it logs your chats, keeps your contact info, allows for voice and video chatting, and is easier for me to read when it comes to the conversation.

[Moydow]

Plus, not everyone likes Skype as an IM tool. I don't see why. Let's just say each has its advantages.

Also, here's another IRC chat, hosted on the StrategyWiki IRC servers:
irc://irc.abxy.org/NIWA
Or go here and type JOIN #NIWA.

[Maxite]

Yes, I do suppose not everyone likes Skype. I did check out the NIWA chatroom on the abxy.org server, and it too was dead.

Back to the original question/idea: Why not just have a generic "Contacts" thread that lists all the forum administrators, the representatives for the member wikis, and information on how to access the various chatrooms that NIWA has?

Or maybe we could update the "Contact" page on the main site to include information on the various chatrooms that have been set up, including the Skype one which is the most frequently used and would thusly be the most useful to people.

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Also, in relation to this: Forum layout. Been brought up before, but a while back I wrote a suggestion on how I thought it might be to better organize the boards. The general idea is to split up posts into sections that they best fit in, so that it's not only easier to navigate the forums, but also easier to find specific information. Here is what I came up with:

A general key is as follows:
== FORUM CATEGORY ==
Board name: Board descriptor
> Subboards

Here's my suggestion:

===NIWA Community===
NIWA Updates: Announcements, policies, suggestions and discussion on changes
> Membership and Affiliate Requests
NIWA General: General NIWA discussion
> NIWA Archives: Old or outdated posts and discussions that are preserved here for historical purposes.

Wiki References: The index of wiki information to help you improve your skills

Member Boards: For general video game discussion, or specialized discussion within member subboards
> Animal Crossing
> Donkey Kong
> Earthbound/Mother
> Golden Sun
> Kirby
> Mario
> Metroid
> Nintendo Discussion (aka Nintendo Wiki)
> Nintendo Wars
> Pikmin
> Pokémon
> StarFox
> Strategies and Guides (aka Strategy Wiki)
> Super Smash Bros Brawl
> The Legend of Zelda

===General Area===
Member Reference: Introductions and farewells.
The Lounge: General conversations belong here.
Forum Gaming: Get involved and have a little fun with some forum games!
Fan Creations: For drawings, music, comics, games or anything else created by you. This is your chance to show it off.
Other Media: For music, television, books, and movies, this is the place.

If nothing else, I'd just like to see an Updates, Archives, and Forum Gaming boards made.

[Greenpickle]

I've been using one of (...there are two why?) the NIWA IRC channels for a while now, and rarely seen anyone; this may be partially to do with timezones, but still could do with fixing, I think.  I don't like Skype.  (Note that client-specific complaints like lack of logs are silly, because half the point of IRC is that it's an open protocol supported by hundreds of clients.)

[tacopill]

There's probably no one on because it's not well known, and there are probably two because one was made with out knowledge of the other.

regardless, i suggest:
#1) we add the basic IRC & NIWA IRC-specific information to NintendoWiki. this way the information can become more public, and people with standalone clients can just sign up and those that IRC over skype also have an option.
#2) we add NIWA IRC-specific info on to the NintendoWiki Community portal page. In addition, links to each wiki's community pages can be posted there.

Yes, I do suppose not everyone likes Skype. I did check out the NIWA chatroom on the abxy.org server, and it too was dead.

Back to the original question/idea: Why not just have a generic "Contacts" thread that lists all the forum administrators, the representatives for the member wikis, and information on how to access the various chatrooms that NIWA has?

Or maybe we could update the "Contact" page on the main site to include information on the various chatrooms that have been set up, including the Skype one which is the most frequently used and would thusly be the most useful to people.

========
========

Also, in relation to this: Forum layout. Been brought up before, but a while back I wrote a suggestion on how I thought it might be to better organize the boards. The general idea is to split up posts into sections that they best fit in, so that it's not only easier to navigate the forums, but also easier to find specific information. Here is what I came up with:

===NIWA Community===
NIWA Updates: Announcements, policies, suggestions and discussion on changes
> Membership and Affiliate Requests
NIWA General: General NIWA discussion
> NIWA Archives: Old or outdated posts and discussions that are preserved here for historical purposes.

Wiki References: The index of wiki information to help you improve your skills

Member Boards: For general video game discussion, or specialized discussion within member subboards
> Animal Crossing
> Donkey Kong
> Earthbound/Mother
> Golden Sun
> Kirby
> Mario
> Metroid
> Nintendo Discussion (aka Nintendo Wiki)
> Nintendo Wars
> Pikmin
> Pokémon
> StarFox
> Strategies and Guides (aka Strategy Wiki)
> Super Smash Bros Brawl
> The Legend of Zelda

===General Area===
Member Reference: Introductions and farewells.
The Lounge: General conversations belong here.
Forum Gaming: Get involved and have a little fun with some forum games!
Fan Creations: For drawings, music, comics, games or anything else created by you. This is your chance to show it off.
Other Media: For music, television, books, and movies, this is the place.

If nothing else, I'd just like to see an Updates, Archives, and Forum Gaming boards made.

I like many of these changes. Although, i had something else in mind for NintendoWiki & StrategyWiki's boards.

[Tina]

Just adding in that there's no point in having a channel if no one goes to it. An option that's dead all the time is pretty dumb.

If we're going to keep an IRC channel, we'd need someone to volunteer staffing it, publicize it as much as we do with Skype, and just stick to one network instead of having multiple channels on multiple networks. Makes it confusing.

This kind of reminds me of when Bulbapedia opened an IRC channel. Nobody really publicized it, and all of the staff used a different chat system in the first place. Not much of a point. :\

While I do love IRC, I kind of think that Skype suits NIWA's lifestyle the most, and it's pretty hard to get people to adapt to a different chat format. I've tried.

[Greenpickle]

No-one goes to it because few people know about it and the rest don't go because no-one goes to it.

[20:12:34] * ChanServ has changed topic for #niwa to: "Channel is inactive. Thanks"

...

You only need to worry about staff if you start getting problems.

I kind of think that Skype suits NIWA's lifestyle the most

Why, apart from the fact it's already established?

[KidIcarus]

How can one even access the NIWA Skype Chat?

[Tina]

You only need to worry about staff if you start getting problems.

Well, yeah. I mean one person to step up and care for the channel, not an entire team of staff. By care for I mean at least not flat out abandon it. (You have no idea how many times I've been in a situation where an op is needed, and the owner's abandoned the channel...)

Why, apart from the fact it's already established?

Since Skype keeps an active log of things and just gives you everything you've missed while not signed out (wow there could have been a better way to word that), and since a lot of people tend to miss each other a lot... yeah. IRC's pretty good if everyone happens to be active around the same time, although there's always idling in a channel.

I'd also like to add in that I'm in no way against IRC whatsoever - I love it, lol. But I'm not sure if it would be worth the effort to try and get an active channel running for here specifically.

[tacopill]

How can one even access the NIWA Skype Chat?

Well, first you need Skype. Then add myself, malake256 or anyone on this list and they probably can add you to the chat. (I recommend adding malake256, the founder of the Chat  ).


@Tina:
The reason i recommended going to NWiki with the info is: the IRC people can talk on IRC, the skype people can go on Skype, and the forums serve as a center of it all. No one is forced to adjust to the other's chat stylings.

[Greenpickle]

I'd also like to add in that I'm in no way against IRC whatsoever - I love it, lol. But I'm not sure if it would be worth the effort to try and get an active channel running for here specifically.

Mhm.  I'm just getting tired of how Skype likes to pass on messages minutes to hours after they were sent, even if I was online when it was sent.  And I just never liked anything closed, really.  (I'm pretty sure it's the only thing that's not open source in my primary OS.  Oh, no, wait, Flash.  Still waiting on Gnash/Lightspark...)

[Nintendoguy1]

OK, I already asked this question, do you want #niwa to be more active? If people here promise they will use it, I can attempt to make the channel a more active place. The channel was originally abandoned because nobody went there, if people start going there again, we can try to return it to activity.

[Xizor]

I prefer Skype mainly for the chat logs. I feel that's a very indispensible tool. When I log into Skype, I can catch up on everything I missed and then make a proper assessment of what to do as soon as I've logged in.

On the matter of forum organization: The staff is discussing right now first what we want to do with our gaming boards, and once we've sorted that out, we're going to move onto reorganizing the forums. Your input will be considered when we do that.

[Greenpickle]

OK, I already asked this question, do you want #niwa to be more active?

I've been using one of (...there are two why?) the NIWA IRC channels for a while now, and rarely seen anyone; this may be partially to do with timezones, but still could do with fixing, I think.

I prefer Skype mainly for the chat logs. I feel that's a very indispensible tool. When I log into Skype, I can catch up on everything I missed and then make a proper assessment of what to do as soon as I've logged in.

Hmm, I think a slight problem with depending on Skype's logs (despite the erratic way they decide to load...) is that their prescence means Skype could be used more and more as the forum should be.  (I say 'could' because I haven't spent enough time looking through the Skype logs to know if it is currently the case.)  The forum should be the place any persistent discussion should take place.  Do I recall correctly that others (non-Skype users) were complaining/worrying about decisions (potentially) being made on Skype?  The logging is, of course, still useful, though (when it gets the messages to you in a timely manner...).

Of course, if you want, I'm sure there are loads of bots out there to save and post up IRC logs to a webpage wherever, or you might even find a service that has it integrated in the channel service.  An argument, of course, is that with Skype, it's already in place - but then, you need to have a Skype account and access to the chat to view the logs.

[KidIcarus]

I prefer IRC just because of convenience. There's no need to sign up and download the program for new users. I would use the chat if people were on it.

[Xizor]

Skype is an instant messenger, and when it is used, it is always used as one. The logs thing just makes it so that important conversations don't get lost, or the allow me to jump right into a discussion if I arrive in the middle of it.

I'm not discounting IRC - I just have never had a good experience when using it.

However, I think this discussion is getting a bit too specific for this thread. Is this really the kind of discussion we want to be having right now? Skype vs. IRC? I mean, I'm all for it if you guys want to have it, but it should be its own thread so we don't lose focus on other important issues, too.

[Greenpickle]

Yeah, sorry, I was just replying to stuff I saw.  I just get emails for topics I track, so I don't really pay attention to what the actual topic is, just the new posts.

[Tappy]

IRC really depends on where you go, you can go to either a stable network or a non stable network. The network I help run is 98% stable, the other 2% is usually when someone tries to Botnet us or DDoS us which is extremely rare and even so it's usually not a problem.

As far as logging goes most IRC clients ( not web browser based ) offer a logging method. It doesn't replay it to you when you log in, unless you have a BNC, but it's available in a text file.

Skype usually seems to not always relay messages when they are said but instead way a few hours then say them.

Not everyone may have skype installed and it kinda seems fairly silly to "force" people to download it and install it to be able to get in on the discussions.

[Maxite]

Yes, IRC and Skype both offer their own advantages.

Moving this along, maybe it might be better to move the Chat display to the main NIWA site rather than burying it in our forums. That way we have one less stickied thread in the way, and it's easier for people to find so the chat can maintain activity.

Also, for the SystemNet chat, I just logged in again, and guess what... NIWAGuest has Op powers. Might want to bump security a wee bit.

[Xizor]

The inconsistency in the chats is why I've said nothing is "official" until it's posted here. The preference differences are handled so long as we all communicate here at the forums.

Let's either make a new topic for IRC vs. Skype issues, and move in here, or just simply move on in here. Either way, this is far too specific for this thread.