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Chat rooms

FollowingHim

FollowingHim

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This description is now out of date, for the latest instructions click here.

At the top of the screen you should now see a new tab entitled "Chat". This is intended to be the new home of ladies chat - and for any other real-time chatting that anybody would like to do. However I've just finished testing and setting it up, and there may be some glitches, so please test it out as much as you can before this coming Tuesday night ladies chat so we can resolve any issues before then.

You must be a registered forum user to use the chat. This is because this chat room is inside the forum, while the old one was outside it and completely separate.

At the moment there are two chat rooms, "General" and "Ladies chat". If you want more, just ask for them. At the moment anyone can access either room (so all the ladies can join ladies chat without finding they haven't been given permission to, and new ladies can easily join). We can however set up private rooms for particular groups of people too, if desired.

Ladies chat should work like this:
  • To find the ladies chat room, click on "Chat", then beside the tab entitled "General Chat" you will see a + sign or a button saying "rooms" depending on the theme. Click this, and click on the "Ladies Chat" room.
  • Anybody can go into the room.
  • But, if the ladies are trying to have ladies chat, and a man tries to come in, a chat moderator (currently Julie or Sarah) will kick them out.
In the chat room, type /help, and you'll find a few other little features to play with.

To leave the chat, hover over your username on the right of the screen, and click "leave room".

Enjoy! And if you have any issues with it please comment below.

Edit 25 July:
Now everybody should be able to make their own chat rooms for private conversations. The General Chat room should be considered public and not used for anything confidential. Read on to see the details of this.
 
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Privacy of the ladies chat
With ladies chat, anyone needs to be able to join (so new ladies can), while at the same time the discussions in the room need to be private. That's a bit contradictory! The settings I have chosen should achieve this this way:

If you haven't gone into the ladies chat room, you will be able to see that there are people there simply because by the word "Chat" at the top of the screen will be a little notification saying how many people are chatting at the moment. You should not be able to see what they are saying.

Chats in the general chat area can be seen by anyone. Only the ladies chat room should be used for ladies chat.

If you go to the ladies chat room, you will be automatically logged in, and everyone in the chat will be able to see that you are there. This is so nobody can sneak in, lurk and read what everyone is saying.

You should not be able to see any conversation from before you joined (except possibly the last screenful of posts, you won't be able to scroll up). When in the conversation, you will only be able to see 100 posts, they will automatically disappear after that. Only the moderator can view the entire record of posts, and all posts will disappear even from the moderators' records after one day. The moderator can also choose to delete all past posts permanently at any time, even in the middle of a chat.

If the moderator does not want you in there and kicks you out, you will not be able to enter the room at all, to either see conversations or comment, for a set period of time or until they specifically allow you back in. If any men keep trying to get into the ladies chat, or any women are continually disruptive, they may be banned from the entire forum. We take ladies chat seriously.

The chat room itself should only be visible on the chat webpage itself - any other places chats could potentially have been viewed on the website have been disabled.

That's the theory. Please bear this in mind as you try the chat out over the next few days. If you see any behaviour that could compromise the privacy of ladies chat, please let me know ASAP and I will try to correct it.
 
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The control for leaving a chat room will be invisible if you set the site to a style that doesn't display it. Currently those styles include Cloud, Flexile, or xendisConnect. However, you can still find and use the control even when using those styles.

To leave a chat room, use the control that's JUST TO THE RIGHT OF your name in the list of chatters. Depending on the site's style setting for your account, that control MAY BE INVISIBLE.

Hover or click your pointer on the spot to the right of your name (or tap that spot if you're using a touchscreen device without a pointer, such as a smartphone). The Actions menu will appear, with one option for you to choose: "Leave room". Click that to leave, or click anywhere else to cancel.
 
Because we now have ladies chat inside the forum, and want to keep the men out of it, it is time for those ladies logging in using their husband's accounts to set up your own accounts! That way the others can feel more comfortable that they are actually talking to you, not your husband. And outside ladies chat, you'll be able to discuss things in confidence with the other ladies by private message, and they will with you too.

There are by definition more women than men in polygyny, and you all seem to have more need to talk to each other than us men do anyway! This new forum has made this all a whole lot easier, so come on in!
 
It shouldn't be. There's a "general" chat room, and a "ladies" room. Specifically what are you doing, and what are you seeing on the screen?
 
Aha, somehow the ladies chat had accidentally ended up the default, must have bumped that when making another tweak. Try again now.
 
FH - I was having the same issue as Eristhophanes earlier, but now I am not put into the lady's room by default. :D
 
Samuel, it's doing that to me, too, from what I can tell.

The 'red square' is the number (white text on red background), in the upper right corner of the Chat main-nav item, that indicates how many people are currently logged into chat.

If I haven't been in chat for a while, or know that I definitely recently quit out of it, that number increments by 1 as soon as I click on the Chat main-nav link. Does that increment represent me? Apparently so — at this point a hover over the number in parentheses next to 'General Chat' does show my name. Entering the room and then typing '/quit' does decrement the number up on the Chat nav item again.

For me it's always General chat, though I think the first time it was Ladies chat.

I hope this info helps!
 
Ok, all working properly then. You are automatically logged in whenever you go there. That is so that nobody can sneak onto the ladies chat page and watch without anyone knowing they are there. If you visit general chat, you're automatically logged in. If you visit ladies chat, you're automatically logged in too. I can't make it behave differently in each room unfortunately, hence the auto-login everywhere. This is so, during ladies chat, the ladies will see you and a moderator can kick you out if needed!

For a few hours I had ladies chat accidentally set as default, fixed now, hence the earlier auto-login to ladies chat.
 
New: Now anyone can now start a chat room! And even password-protect it!

Reason: I'm a devious fellow and have been working out ways to spy on ladies chat, so I can then close these loopholes to ensure I couldn't do it. Found a gaping hole, and am changing things completely to try and close it.

Your username disappears from the chat room when you have been inactive for 30 minutes. So, in theory, some guy could open the ladies chat room an hour before the ladies turned up, leave it open in his browser, let his name disappear, then watch them all talk. Provided he never actually commented his name would never appear and they'd never know. I couldn't have that.

But, if you start a brand new chat-room, you know it's empty, because you just started it. Nobody can be sitting there spying on you. So if the ladies start a new room whenever they want to chat this is avoided. Rather than having a dedicated "ladies" room, they can make a fresh one whenever they want it, and close it when they're finished with it. And for practical reasons, everyone needed to be able to do this, because they don't know who'll turn up first.

If anyone needs to have a private discussion, you can do the same thing. Just open a new chatroom and use that. If anyone else shows up you'll see them arrive. If you need to get rid of anyone intruding on a private discussion, the room author should be able to kick them out by simply typing "/kick username" and they'll be banned from your room for 2 hours.

Please close chatrooms when you've finished using them to keep everything tidy, if this becomes a mess I'll have to limit it to just moderators being able to open chatrooms again, but it's more convenient if everyone can use it. The room should close automatically after a day if you forget to close it, but I haven't tested this. From time to time a moderator may delete rooms too to keep things tidy, if your room disappears just make another one.

Remember that the "General Chat" room is completely public. It's a great place for everyone to meet and yarn - but there may be people watching the conversation whose names are not listed in the sidebar. If you need privacy, get a room!
(pun intended)
 
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And, with this setting, we don't need the auto-login thing any more, so that is gone, you won't be logged in just when you view the page, but will log in if you:
  • Comment in the "General Chat" page (that will log you in to general chat), or
  • Go to a chat room (that will log you into that room)
All much smoother. Thankyou everyone for bearing with me during this testing period, and putting up with all the changes as we've been working this out. Hopefully this will be the final configuration... Please tell me if it behaves as expected, and tell me any problems or unexpected behaviour you encounter.
 
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