Messaging system (not a shoutbox[?])

Bump for exposure

 

I'd toss a few pennies towards that fund. I think/Agree this would be a great asset to this website, as others have stated.

 

It may be stressful on the system but funding a small server can't hurt. My old site used to handle 200 people at some points and a whole vbulletin forum and it was hosted with a basic hosting plan.

 

Grave is offering up his server as a host for the IM system, but the issue has been raised whether it's safe to put the trades of hundreds of market users in the hands of a non-staff member (or even in the hands of anyone but Richard/Sythe himself) But I'm sure we can figure it out in due time.

 

The site that I used to mod on had this. It decreased scams by 10 fold, however it opened the way for sellers coming and messaging people if they wanted to buy it (I suppose they were the IM version of cold callers).

To fix this, we put a post limit on it, to ensure that there weren't new people from other websites just going on to spam, however this didn't stop people from advertising whatever they were happening to be selling, whether it was ingame currency or levelling, etc. and sadly there is no real way to combat this, aside from telling people to report people who were doing it, and removing said people's chat privileges.


Also, you could control the people who are allowed to view logs (and even watch conversations live) as there is a single username and password to log in and moderate it. I don't know whether that could be viewed as a security risk, or a bonus.


Overall, it was a pretty good idea, and did ensure that people knew who they were trading. Naturally, this cannot combat PayPal chargebacks, and the like, but it removes the probabilities of imposter scams.
Oh yeah, and it was pretty hefty on the server space, but I think Grave has already offered to host it on a parallel server.

 

Thanks for the testimony, I figured it was really helpful towards scamming, but up until now it's just been [a solid] theory. As far as advertisement, I think that's also done on MSN; I don't find it too annoying when people contact me saying they have gold for sale, it's as easy and just closing a window. However the post limit is a good idea for bot spammers and things like that. Lastly, there's no way to mass message like the PM feature has, right? That would make advertisement really annoying if people regularly mass-IM'd everyone on the forum

 

No, there's not. Similarly to FaceBook chat, there is a list along the right hand side, and you simply find the person you're looking for.
One issue is that due to Sythe's vast userbase, and there are quite a few active people around, it could become an issue searching for people. I'm not too sure how big an issue this would be, though.

 

It'd be nice to have a button in the post bit, like maybe right here:

that, when clicked, opens up a conversation with that person

 

Grave's done a lot for the site. I think he deserves a little trust haha xD

 

There's been a lot of people who've done loads for the site and have ended up scamming or taking advantage of a situation. Everyone has their own interests, including Grave. Whether that makes him trustworthy or not can't really be determined. I too believe he's trusted, but that doesn't mean we can just say "oh well, he won't do anything, let's not think about how to make it more secure"

 

I can see some good and some bad coming with this, if Grave wants to donate a small sum for the server then that would be great, but I don't think he should be allowed access to it. I'm not calling him a scammer, but given how many trades would go on across it, it would be chaotic if it were in the wrong hands.

Also, say this goes ahead, what software did you have in mind for it Tony?

 

Im not saying he's not going to scam anyone, I'm just saying that he deserves a little respect

Sensitive information should never be given over site chat systems anyway, they are a lot more vulnerable than say PMs.

 

@danai he does deserve a little trust, but access to this feature is no small amount of trust. In fact, it's more possibility and more money then anyone's ever been tempted with before in the history of sythe.

 

Oh I know, he has a lot of respect too, it's just you have to be careful. It's great to see he'd be happy to donate some money for the IM server.

As for sensitive information, people would probably enter that anyway, which again there would have to be considerations of who could view the chat logs; Admins (Possibly Globals?)

Edit: Thanks Tony, didn't see that.

 

Hmm logs would be interesting because they will either strain the SQL server or they will take up lots of HDD space, or be inadmissible as evidence.

The whole chat system is simple and can be done in PHP or Java easily enough and connecting it to vB wouldn't be terribly difficult either which takes care of most other features you want.

As far as logs go if they are hosted locally on your own machine they would be inadmissible unless some sort of encryption could be used. User provides the encrypted log file and then an admin or globals have a program that can decrypt the logs ensuring that here can't be any tampering with the log files.

 

Maybe cometchat has an encryption plugin c:

 

Cometchat doesnt give users logs IIRC. Instead, mods (or the selected ranks) can view them via the ModCP/ACP.

@Laptop You could give him a custom rank haha

 

I greatly support this idea. I have seen this idea thrown around, sometimes getting hundreds of supporters, but this seems to be the one that would finally bring some sort of chat/trade interaction to the site itself.

 

Agreed. Bump for exposure

 

Bump for exposure, would anyone care to post the 100th post? c;