Live Chat Back Up + Response To Other Feature Requests

[johnnygoodman]

Howdy All,

Live Chat is back. Sorry for the slow action here. CPAPtalk tickets compete with others wanting to make our business more profitable or secure and I'm the guy who ranks them.

We are also looking at tapatalk. I'd personally like and use this feature. We've customized cpaptalk past the standard phpBB version, which may lead to snags in integrating. More on this front when I hear back.

We aren't going to change the way guests can post or how people flag spam. Here are my reasons:

1. Not everyone is good at using the internet. If they manage to make it to CPAPtalk anyway and need CPAP help, I don't want to throw up another barrier. I'd rather deal with the spam and sniping being anonymous allows for in exchange for catching those who badly need what we offer. I believe this but there are surely two sides. If you disagree very strongly, there are alternative CPAP communities available who force registration - though you are most welcome here and also most welcome to carry on the debate for locking CPAPtalk down to registered only.

2. You can't automate spam prevention. You can only reduce it. There's money in running the line, so the line will be run. To me the more important question is "do the people of CPAPtalk value it enough to keep its streets clean". They clearly do, they have a weapon hand to fight the spam that our automated systems miss, and the streets are clean. It isn't always elegant or clean, but it does work and it does keep the power where it should be.

Johnny

[BleepingBeauty]

Thanks for fixing the chat, Johnny.

[LoQ]

1. Not everyone is good at using the internet. If they manage to make it to CPAPtalk anyway and need CPAP help, I don't want to throw up another barrier. I'd rather deal with the spam and sniping being anonymous allows for in exchange for catching those who badly need what we offer. I believe this but there are surely two sides. If you disagree very strongly, there are alternative CPAP communities available who force registration - though you are most welcome here and also most welcome to carry on the debate for locking CPAPtalk down to registered only.

I completely agree. I often delete spam, and I don't mind doing it in the slightest.

It would be nice if everyone else would either delete spam or ignore it, but it seems like that will never happen. Might I suggest that if someone responds to spam in the future, that the guidelines allow us to delete not only the initial spam, but the first one or two posts following that, as long as they are just about the spam? That way we can get rid of the whole thread, even if a newbie has responded to the spam.

[Otter]

2. You can't automate spam prevention. You can only reduce it. There's money in running the line, so the line will be run. To me the more important question is "do the people of CPAPtalk value it enough to keep its streets clean". They clearly do, they have a weapon hand to fight the spam that our automated systems miss, and the streets are clean. It isn't always elegant or clean, but it does work and it does keep the power where it should be.

The trick to reducing spam is to make spamming more trouble than it is worth. If one or two simple measures that do not inconvenience real users can reduce the number of automated spam posts why not do it? The spam button is a great way of handling the problem, but obviously, members would like not to need it as often.

[snuginarug]

Thank you for fixing things up for us... I appreciate everything you do for us, every day I use this site, chat and forum both. I don't know where i'd be without this community you provide for us.