[force5]

Is there some way to establish specific times for people to meet to discuss a subject of interest?

I seem to have a problem finding anyone there. I've noticed others have come and gone prior to my visit without making contact with anyone.

Since I've beem retired for some time, I have few restrictions as my availability for this purpose.

Thanks.........John A.

[yogi]

Originally Posted by force5 Is there some way to establish specific times for people to meet to discuss a subject of interest? I seem to have a problem finding anyone there. I've noticed others have come and gone prior to my visit without making contact with anyone. Since I've beem retired for some time, I have few restrictions as my availability for this purpose. Thanks.........John A.

same thing happened to me. my suggestion - post a topic of discussion and time that you can be in a chat room and see if it works.

yogi

[Robert]

I've had several requests to get something going in the chat room so I'm giving this some thought. I was waiting for membership to grow a bit before organizing something like this. With 247 members, 36% active in last 30 days, and an average of 13 registered member visits per day, we may be able to pull this off.

I'll probably set something up for a time when most people are not working or in school. We have members from all over the world so choosing a time could be a little tricky. I'll can check the log files to determine what day/time of day has the most traffic. There are web sites to handle the time conversion issue so that we are all in sync on the time.

Not sure about the topic selection yet. I'd love to have some special guests on to answer questions/discuss issues, but that is probably a ways off still. I think an initial chat meeting on some general topic is a good way to go. If that works out then perhaps a periodic (weekly/bi-week/monthly?) chat meeting would work for us.

[yogi]

Originally Posted by Robert I'll probably set something up for a time when most people are not working or in school. We have members from all over the world so choosing a time could be a little tricky. I'll can check the log files to determine what day/time of day has the most traffic. There are web sites to handle the time conversion issue so that we are all in sync on the time. Not sure about the topic selection yet. I'd love to have some special guests on to answer questions/discuss issues, but that is probably a ways off still. I think an initial chat meeting on some general topic is a good way to go. If that works out then perhaps a periodic (weekly/bi-week/monthly?) chat meeting would work for us.

Hi Robert,
some suggestions- first of all i was watching and commenting on, our forum and another TOE-yahoo group past week .
it looks like a noisey and fragmented discussion forum. one cannot grasp a cohesive theme, though there are discussion and answers for all kind of topics. i would suggest a one main thread ( i think we have it already) where we can maintain/ archieve the conclusions of various threads. it should go something like this- say i visit Toe-quest -i should be directed to the main thread where all the facts are archieved. from there if you want to get into the proof and validity of the statements, one can branch out to visit various other threads and discussions threads where factual statement originated. i nominate you as the moderator (we can have multiple moderators) of the main thread.
please comment on this and also accept the nomination.

thanks

sincerely,
yogi

[Robert]

I would suggest a one main thread ( i think we have it already) where we can maintain/ archieve the conclusions of various threads. it should go something like this- say i visit Toe-quest -i should be directed to the main thread where all the facts are archieved. from there if you want to get into the proof and validity of the statements, one can branch out to visit various other threads and discussions threads where factual statement originated.

I think this is a great idea. I'll accept the nomination but need to consider the best approach. I've thought about this in the past, and have considered various ways to present that data. I researched mind-mapping software in the past, which actually worked pretty well, but it's web presentation was not nearly mature enough for what I wanted. A flash presentation where you can drill down on the facts and then link to supporting discussions in the forums would be nice too, but that would require a lot of programming and members may not wish to download the necessary flash player. A thread in the forum may work for now, but I'd like to move towards a more visual oriented display of the factual information in the future that links to the supporting text discussions. I'll give the thread approach some more thought and comment more later.

I'll start an ongoing thread on this somewhere to keep track of this (and the chat room planning also). Gotta go to bed now. Getting late here. --Robert

[Robert]

I have started two new threads in the new planning sub-forum for the ideas expressed in this thread. Please see the "Upgrading the Chat Room" thread for future updates regarding enhancements to the Chat Room. Also, see the "The Quest" thread for updates on the idea yogi expressed about having a single thread of information with branching threads for supporting info.