Why so few folks allowed in the chat on GPGNet?
One aspect of GPGNet that seems particularly poorly designed is the chat rooms. They have two main flaws that are seriously annoying:
- Only 80 people are allowed in each room, frequently segmenting the chat between two or more rooms during periods of high activity.
- You are automatically kicked from the chat room after only a short period of inactivity.
The first “feature” is annoying because there really is no need to artificially separate out the chatrooms. It’s annoying having to swap back and forth between the active rooms trying to find interesting conversation. Let people create private rooms if they want to, but there should only be one main chat room, or at the very least, there shouldn’t be size limits.
The second “feature” is annoying because I’m always getting hit by the “you were removed from the chat room” message. How many people really remember to always exit the chat room before beginning a game? Not many. And what is the harm in having people idling in the chat, anyway? I’m used to the FreeNode IRC network, where some of the larger channels have 900 people in them, most of them idle. It just works so much better. You just join the channel and stay there, without having to worry about rejoining it every fifteen minutes if you’re away. And the chat is never artificially split between multiple rooms.
