Personally, I have used all three chat systems that have been around for YaBB, including IronWing's early one back in gold. There are still a couple of things from that system that I miss. I would be happy with any of the three making a reappearance. I would also like to make a request for a couple of features to be considered for whichever version might make a return again. Three features I would like to see: 1) A way to capture the chat into a text file, if the admin wants. (I'm pretty sure this was in IronWing's chat mod.) ie, the admin can click a button in the chat, and from that moment on, every line of text someone sends is written to a text file, as well as displayed on screen, and that text file continues until the admin shuts it off again, so a scheduled chat can be 'recorded' and posted for download for those who weren't around. 2) Live chat games ... I no longer expect anything to come of this, but on the off chance somebody will say "That sounds very cool," and also thinks they know of a way to do it, I'll keep mentioning it once every few years. The first game I would suggest is a live, competitive version of Hangman. The players take turns guessing letters, earning points, and each player solves the puzzle (submitted privately) whenever they can, scoring more points. Second would be a trivia game, much like the trivia mod, except a live chat competition. Further games could be developed in time, but I would start with the chat, itself, then add the first game as a sort of mod to a mod, a few months later, then the second game after that, and so on. 3) There was a third suggestion, but it disappeared while I was typing out the first, so nevermind. Just sharing my thoughts on the chat mods. I liked IronWing's the best, for it's easy templating, and a couple of the extra cool features. I liked the IRC chat for some of it's robustness, but as noted, there was also some learning curve to it. I liked Carsten's for it's self-contained-ness, but it was missing some of the features the other two had, which I liked. Finally, being a little off topic, when was the last time somebody did the games mod? PS XTC ... since I know there is very little chance of somebody creating my live chat games ideas, I'd love to see the return of the IRC chat mod, simply because it has people who make chat robots who can run games of the sort, if you have a host that will allow them.
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