Places to Chat
Chatterbox: Inkwell
Changes to the Chatterbox
1. First of all, threads 3+ months old should be automatically deleted so that the forums don't get too clogged up. I really don't need to scroll to the bottom of CaC and see that there are thirty pages of threads. After about page six the threads all were last replied to 6+ weeks ago. It will make the Cricket servers run a heckuva lot faster to get rid of threads that were last replied to 3 months ago or longer. If you want to keep a thread alive, you can just post on it and bring it back to the top.
2. Account-type sign in should be added. Right now, these posts can be Google searched and found. I really do not want someone in Russia reading what I wrote about birthday celebrations. We should be able to create accounts on here (one per person), log in, and THEN view posts. It would be an extra step, but it would be greatly increased privacy. We should also have multiple "screen names" (but a limited number) per account.
3. Following the next one, being able to edit your own posts, hide ones you don't want to see, restrict ones to certain users, and so forth.
4. More options for formatting posts and comments, e.g., strikethrough, underline, different fonts and font sizes, more emoticons 
, and stuff like that.
5. Again, following number 2, be able to see posts we've read and posts we've not read and differentiate between them.
6. Be able to set a title for posts instead of being the first thirty characters of the post plus a ... after it.
If you have any more suggestions, please add them. And please tell me what you think of these ideas. I'm hoping at least a few of them will go through in real life. This will be posted across all forums minus Blab about Books.
Admins, please don't shorten this. I thought for a while about these changes.
submitted by Timothy C., age 12, classified
(October 2, 2009 - 3:09 pm)
(October 2, 2009 - 3:09 pm)
I agree with mostly with #4 and wholeheartedly with #6, but I totally disagree about accounts. That's what I love about Chatterbox as opposed to other forum-type sites: you don't have to create an account, log in, give the website your email address and personal information, etc. Frankly, if Chatterbox changed to an account forum, I wouldn't come on here anymore. Furthermore, about #3 - I can kind of see where you're coming from, but I think it would be rather rude to restrict posts to certain readers. This is an open forum and I think it works that way. Some of these rules would make it seem too much like a social network site, like Facebook and MySpace, and that's certainly not what Chatterbox is about.
(October 2, 2009 - 4:33 pm)
I agree with Allison.
(October 4, 2009 - 11:18 am)
Top...
(October 3, 2009 - 11:26 am)
1. No. Nononononono. What if there was a really awesome thread that everyone forgot about?
2.I like this website the way it is... I don't want to go through all that work and give away personal info and have to go through time consuming junk to look at the website.
3.I don't like the restrict thing. It sounds plain RUDE.
4. This would be okay...
5. Could you explain this one again? It sounds like you'd have a massive page here...
6. I actually agree.
(October 4, 2009 - 11:17 am)
Well, one of my main issues with the CB is that, for some reason, italics/bold don't seem to work with my browser (Safari). Being lazy I haven't checked Firefox. Regardless, it's very annoying not to be able to italicize titles properly, so perhaps a bug fix...?
1. But they're so fun to read through! Maybe three month+ old threads with fewer than, say 15 comments should be deleted, but not old RP's or RRR's. Alternatively, older threads could be locked (so you can't post on them) like they do on the MB
2. Nah, that could be off-putting to new CBers. Not saying the comment system doesn't have its flaws (it does.) I hate the whole click-reply-open-new-page thing. It takes so long and clutters up my tab bar. Perhaps (again) something like the MB does, with a comment box at the bottom of the page, and replying in a nested format (clicking the reply link at the bottom of each individual comment) merely opens up a new text box on the same page.
3. Edits would be nice, especially for stupid typos, like "to" for "too" when I type to fast. Restrictions on the other hand, hiding/restriction would be both a) somewhat unnecessary as it's an open forum and b) rude.
4. Just me, but I prefer HTML formatting (<b></b>, <strike></strike>, for example) to the system we have now. And yes, we need more formatting options and formatting objects that /work in Safari, please/. See? See the dash thing? I hate doing that, it looks tacky, but if I do italics they won't show up.
5. Yes please, otherwise it's too time consuming/frustrating digging through the same comments again and again to find the new nested comment. Which is why I hate nesting, but whatever.
6. YES! TITLES! P*EASE? *puppy eyes at techie people/Admin*
(October 10, 2009 - 6:38 pm)