I think it’d be a more casual way to connect and give quick tips/feedback on the go. I don’t want to start one if one is already set up, but I don’t see any evidence of a big chat like that either.
Hey, it’s a good question. We’ve thought about - and are still considering - implementing a chat feature into the forum site directly, but didn’t decide one way or another because of reasons including the importance of the visibility and record of what users are posting and experiencing. On the other hand it may be more casual and easy for users to talk. I would not be happy regarding users being directed to an external service because of the potential of exploitation or mistreatment of users registering here who are vulnerable. That might sound unreasonable, but unfortunately there has been external chats set up before elsewhere and users have informed me that there was mistreatment of a severely affected member who is no longer with us.
If an implemented chat is something that people do have views on I’m happy to hear.
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I think a chat is a great idea. Could be a more interactive way to share ideas and possibly could provide motivation to try healthy habits discussed in the chat.
A discord sever can be set to private and not public, so no “outsiders” can join in and have the slight oportunity of mistreatment.
Hey @Wetaka,
I understand how discord works. The example I gave did not involve “outsiders”. People are affected in extremely diverse ways and it can be very difficult for some members affected in a certain way to understand that others might not be experiencing the same symptoms, the same degree of symptoms, and the same responses.
This platform and project is moderated according to the community guidelines and data policies, and is run with a responsibility to our members that could not be managed on external services with the resources we have. As I’ve said we will not be comfortable forwarding users to an external service. However, we are still considering an implemented chat functionality - do you have thoughts on that?
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i think any sort of more casual chat just for people to connect and not feel alone with this is beneficial. i understand the reasoning on external sites, but why not just do the discord it’s free quick and easy, and have the mods here be mods there? seems like it would require less resources like coding the site and creating a chat function that’s even worth using.
again, if that’s simply not possible and you guys aren’t willing to consider it, like i said above, any sort of chat i think would be good for people. sometimes literally just talking to another human can help.
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We already have a live chat fully integrated for moderator use, so there would be no additional work for this to expand it if it was really wanted. It presents a button on the side of the screen and you just press it and it brings up a chat side bar. On mobile the button is in the top bar and just opens a full screen chat which is easily x’d again.
Does this functionality sufficient or are there discord specific things people want? I think it is possible we can easily implement some integration with a discord, such as notifications both ways and easy chat transcript posting, if some of the moderators (and perhaps volunteers like yourself) would feel comfortable and help to moderate a propeciahelp discord as a “social media” of our site, which we are keen to expand (we have recently acquired the youtube and twitter accounts for @pete to begin content on), but the issues I’ve posted above are our key concerns:
As well, this site is by far the largest PFS catalogue of PFS experiences and is well cited in medical literature. Splitting activity, given our community is so small, always inherently harms the visibility of the issue to scientific professionals and the world.
Finally, the issue of privacy: people using their discord names or whatever may find themselves less anonymous. And of course, I have no idea what their data policies are.
Bearing in mind what I’ve written above, for those keen on a chat system, please vote below.
- Propeciahelp discord with site integration
- Integrated on-site chat
0 voters
the youtube/twitter stuff is a great idea, more awareness is going to help. facebook as well, if the resources are available ads might even be nice to combat all those keeps and hims i see pop up. since using a variety of social media is the standard, seems like it would be best to just do the site and discord chats. i can see the problem of having people to cover all that stuff, might be spreading it a bit thin. i didn’t see an app for this site, so that would be my only issue with the built in chat not being as good as discord. and just on the names issue, you can set a unique username for every server that you are in.
as long as it’s beneficial to the community i don’t care. i’d just like it to be seamless and convenient. anyways, that’s my opinion. i hope bumping this post will get some more ppl to vote.
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We don’t have any resources.
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Hah. We have some human resources.
I’m not familiar with the bells and whistles of Discord, but like the chat we use occassionally in this site. It is very plain/simple and works great for casual conversations.
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There’s a chat on this site??
Think it’s only available for mods atm
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Well, the polling is pretty clear - additionally because I accidentally voted for the wrong one, making it 9/10 in favour of a chat feature here.
Please see the following announcement:
https://forum.propeciahelp.com/t/propeciahelp-site-news-and-feedback-thread/30021/65?u=axolotl
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Where is the chatting feature?
We don’t have one. This is an old thread, I’m not sure what the plans were back then. A real-time chat is something many people have expressed interest for, however it is difficult to moderate all-around-the-clock. So while the idea is nice, it is sadly a little too prone to abuse, currently.
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