Chat room Tuesday/Thursday transition

Dave, is there any way the chat room dialog can be "cleared" between chat sessions?

It's a little confusing to find leftover chat from Tuesday morning when you log on Thursday evening and vice versa. Also, the Tuesday chats often go late and end up being discussions with just a few people... and sometimes topics come up that nobody really wants the whole world to see when they click the chat button on Thursday morning. Now that I know there's carry-over between sessions (I wasn't aware of it until a passing comment of mine caused an issue a while back), if I'm the last person in the room Tuesday night I can type a page of poetry at the end... but there must be an easier solution.

Thanks!

Nobody else thinks this is something that needs fixing? Just curious, because I see a few dozen views and no comments. Maybe it's just me... or maybe I made a confusing title for this thread.

i kinda like reading it and seeing what i missed-just me!
really dont see it as that hard to figure out what is tuesday night and
thursdays mornings!

Well, it's not like I have any real expectation of privacy in the chat room, because I know anyone can drop in at any time. But it was disconcerting when I realized that the tail end of late night "conversations" between 2 or 3 people would remain visible until enough people had dropped by the chat room on Thursday morning to bump it down the page. I could do without that. On occasion, the discussion takes a personal turn, especially when there's only a couple of people in the room. I guess anybody who's on toward the end of chat just has to be aware that their words will be available for all to see until some time into the next chat session. I'd still like to see that changed.

I hadn't noticed it. Until school's out, I'm not usually on Tuesday nights anyhow. Suppose the argument could be made that you chat about things in the late evening that won't 'fly' in the am., lol!

dont chat about stuff you dont want others to know- thats what INSTANT messsage is for~
get yourself a AIM or messenger account-i have them!

Right. But my point is that sometimes the conversation does get just a little more personal, and I don't think it usually occurs to people at 11:45 pm Tuesday that their words will still be posted at 8:30 Thursday morning. Granted, in the usual run of things the last page of chat is more like "I wonder what the weather will be like tomorrow" and "Good night, Gracie!" but still. :-)

Ohhh, Jill...Did I miss something good?? Just poking at you;>

LOL, no, it's just something that's been on my mind. I did make a brief comment late at night some time back about some posting activity that I found distracting, and most of the context scrolled down off the page by the time some other folks saw it on Thursday morning, so it caused an unnecessary stir. That's neither here nor there -- except that's when I realized that the chat room wasn't "cleared" between sessions.

Oh, I think I get it, lol!

Yeah, and I'm not trying to revisit that... but I'd like to avoid future embarassment for anybody else who may not know about the carry-over between sessions. :-)

First I've heard of a chat room here. Where is it?

Hopefully, admin will respond to your request soon. Forewarned is forearmed though, right? :-)

David, it will pop up on your home page-upper right when it is open. Look for the big yellow smiley faces...can't miss it:)

It's "open" on Tuesday evenings and Thursday mornings... the limited hours are because it's monitored (I guess to make sure we don't get into too much trouble, LOL). Drop by sometime! The topics vary and aren't always plant-related (we seem to get onto food and kid topics a lot, too), but you can jump right in with whatever is on your mind... there are often several conversations/topics going simultaneously, so there's no such thing as "interrupting" in the chat room. It's an easy-going place! :-)

First time I joined it, the subject was chickens, lol! I throughly enjoyed it, but didn't have anything to add...No chickens here.

Dave, the "solution" we've come up with when something gets posted toward the end of a chat session that doesn't seem like it should stay there for the next 36-plus hours is for somebody to post a page of poetry, line by line...

Couldn't we please just have the chat room cleared between sessions instead?

I do know anybody could drop in and see anything that gets posted in chat... but most of the time, what gets posted will slide down off the page after a while. The last page of chat, however, is often visible for the first hour or so until things start "cooking" in the chat room Thursday mornings, and it's also visible to anybody who drops in meanwhile via the back door... that's a lot more folks than whoever might happen to drop by at 11:30 at night.

Here's a post Trish made about chat.... I think what she said is the best comment I've read about it. "Please, if we wouldn't want it on DG, we don't want it in the chat room."

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/452211/

So, if things are said in the chat room that you wouldn't post on a forum, perhaps do as notmartha suggested, and use an instant messaging program. Yahoo has a feature to open up a private chat room if more than 2 people want to "talk".

Just the way you've brought this up certainly makes me want to pop into chat just to see what you're talking about, and I don't even like chat rooms. LOL

Critter: I don't usually remember about the chat room but I logged in this past Thursday morning and was really confused ... the chat didn't make sense when I saw someone saying good night, and wondered why they were saying g'night when it was morning! LOL.

I agree that the chat room should be cleared when it closes for the day. After all, it's not a continuous chat from day to day like the forums ... only two days a week, it should be cleared after each session.

I'm not talking about anything that violates the AUP, nor anything that's brought on a warning then or later from admin. I'm talking about, for example, somebody mentioning what they paid for some real estate (probably not something they wanted hundreds of random people to read Thursday morning)... or the other night (late, but not actually at the end of chat) I was chatting about some directions we were looking in trying to start a family... that's something I'd post on a thread in the prayer request forum, but somehow it would feel different to me having it left up as "leftover" chat to be read by whomever happened by on Thursday morning.

The whole "leftover chat" thing just has a very awkward feel to me, and my concern is really for anybody who posts at the end of a session without realizing their post won't disappear when the chat room closes. Even something that's simply out of context (because the context dropped off the bottom of the page) could end up causing misunderstandings and embarrassment.

Lin, I agree... that's a confusion in its own right, quite apart from any other concerns! I've also logged on and thought oboy there's a bunch of folks here today, then wondered where they all went... only to realize they were logged on until noon on Thursday and now it's Tuesday evening and I'm all alone!

Jill,
I agree. Some of our talks have been pretty interesting, but taken out of context, just aren't the same. Well - if it's just us, we'll have to start reciting something interesting, like lyrics to a song... or keep pasting in same "good night" or similar, over and over, till good stuff is replaced. I didn't realize they carried forward either. Came here to get reminded when chat room is open. Need the back door too, just in case. Can you dmail it? Sorry I was out for so long and looking forward to catching up!! ~ Suzi :)

Hmmm, I can't see the smilie? Dave ... could you put a link there?
Thanks. ~Susan