[Michael2Wolves]

Okay, so there it is, I type out a nice quick reply in chat.

"There was an error sending your message. Please try again."

I try again.

"There was an error sending your message. Please try again."

I try again.

"There was an error sending your message. Please try again."

I try again.

"There was an error sending your message. Please try again."

I try again.

Now it says I'm not logged in.

WTF. Seriously? How many times do we have to lose the thread of our conversation because we type out a nice long sentence, and bam, the scrugging chat system chokes and tells us there's an error?

It's not on my end. My cache is as clean as a whistle and the browser was just opened. It's on your end, and it's very irritating when trying to explain something to a moderator on there and you're getting @#$%^ with by the chat system's capricious nature.

What is it going to take to fix this? Or switch to a better chat engine? How do you expect people who are already mentally unstable, and a lot of whom deal with anger issues, paranoia issues, and more, to be able to use a broken chat system when it's kicking with regularity at least five to ten errors an hour?

That is unacceptable.



Edit: This happens no matter what browser you use. I'm currently using Safari on MacOS that is up to date.

[Crazy Hitch]

This has happened to me intermittently this week too.

[DocJohn]

I hear your frustration, but online chat systems are very much a dying medium. This means it leaves us with very few options to choose from, all of which must meet our requirements of being mobile-friendly, integrate with our existing community system, and work across a wide range of browsers. I know it sounds "easy" and "simple" to anyone who just experiences these frustrating error messages, but it's nothing of the sort. It is complex, and we've gone down this road a half dozen times in the past decade.

We're open to suggestions. Everytime we look at what's available, however, we have yet to find something more reliable or "better" than what we have now. As flawed as it is, it seems to work for most people most of the time on most platforms.

[Michael2Wolves]

No, I get it. I used to see the stuff they were doing on another website, so I know it's not just, point, click, and presto, insta-chat-fix. I know Xenforo has some pretty good options, but that would be a seachange here to fix a minor problem.

You could try integrating a discord chat server which offers not only chat, but voice chat, too, if you wanted to use it for your monthly ones. Audio quality isn't a big issue on discord, either, so no pops, buzzes, dropped or clipped words, or anything else. And it seems secure enough--I've not really heard of anyone having their discord server hacked, but I don't think it would be any more risky than this site's. That wouldn't be as big a pain to implement and change as much as would switching to Xenforo, either. And it's not a big deal to have a small discord chat window open while crusing the forums, so it's very accessible to older users, and for people who already are on discord and worry about anonymity, I believer there is a way to set up multiple profiles in one account, so that shouldn't be a worry, either. If you want more info, though, I would point you to email some of the guys over on nexusmods.com--they could give you a lot more information on discord and its pros and cons as a chat server host than I could. The owner, Robin, is pretty amiable and usually gets back to people.

[DocJohn]

Yes, so unless the chat software integrates directly with vBulletin, it's not something we would likely consider.

So yes, if you know of something that integrates with vBulletin, we're happy to look at it. PM or post info directly to such software and happy to review. (Discord seems to be a standalone chat server, with no apparent integration with vBulletin, so not sure how that would work.)

[Michael2Wolves]

I took a quick look at vBulletin's official website, but I think I'm going to take a deeper look into it and see what I can find so I can at least bring something to the table. lol It looks as though this is an older version of vBulletin, though, right?

For discord, you would host the chat separate from the site, and it gives you a full suite of controls over moderation. You would just have people use their profile names from here so we'd know who each other is. It's very customize-able on the admin end from what I've seen. Just an idea. Who knows. In a year, they may come out with something even better--technology is always moving quick.

Thanks for letting me vent, though.