My initial reaction was negative - I like the CB as it is, but then castaway (for it was she) made an interesting point - when a few of the regulars get busy chatting, no one else can get a look in. I bet there are times when someone has something serious & perl related to talk about, and the constant rapid fire silly jokes irritate the hell out of them.
Update: for clarification - I like the CB the way it is and would prefer it not to be channelled, although I can understand the argument in favour./update
BUT, IMHO channeling into themed chatterboxes wouldn't work particularly well. Look how well themed chatrooms work on the various ISP portals - yahoo etc (chatrooms - hordes of people with no conversation & l33tsp34king kids --).
As an alternative, could I suggest something modelled on the way CB radio in the UK (and for all I know elsewhere) used to work. I'm sure there are other UK monks who rushed out in '82 and bought CB radios, only to spend their evenings plaintively and futilely crying '1-4 for a copy' to the ether.
The way it used to work was this. The channels were numbered - 9 was emergency services, 14 was general chat, and 19 was commercial traffic. All the other channels were for general use. If you got into a conversation with 1 or more other people, you'd nominate a channel to move to. Over time individual channels sometimes became unofficially associated with particular groups of people.
The CB could have something vaguely similar - spare channels people could switch to when wanting to talk like human beings, and a less sensible general chat channel where preoccupations with badgers,eels,food or rodents can be maintained. Not that there should be complete balkanisation of the CB, but with multiple channels people could get out of each others way. Plus, numbered channels could be temporarily designated for particular uses ("we're working on XYZ piece of PM functionality, channel X is designated for that for the next week", "the German Perl Workshop is coming up, channel Y is German language only for the next week or two" etc).
Default channel would be the chat channel, but this could be changed for the current session with a drop down list & a cookie (?).
/me waits... OK, now before any devils come and kick me up and down the cloister for not having a complete specification, I'm polling for what people think about this.
Plus, devils permitting, I'm quite happy to work on implementing this myself.
So, what do you think?
Note: I'm not saying this should be done, just suggesting a possible approach if it is done.
In reply to Channelling the CB by g0n
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