Site Feedback I want to critique an aspect of blue light

helpingout

Bluelighter
Joined
May 16, 2024
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Blue light is a great domain for gathering information about how to practice drug use in order to reduce harm from drug use.

It does an excellent job at helping people to do this.

But, Bluelight is also a living document.
The posts are made by living people who often die. Their posts forever echoing their thoughts. The shrine full of mourners professing their impact.

It’s a kind of heavy place in some ways.

Likewise, there is levity. People have great discussions on here. Private messages go off and relationships are formed. Bluelight is an incredible resource to connect with other like minded individuals.

The forums themselves though are static.

If I understand things right. A thread is supposed to be a permanent installation and users are intended to answer self generated questions by using the search function to identify threads which possess an answer to their question.

Many people on Bluelight use it as if it were not intended to be a repository of information but instead use it as a resource to connect themselves to people who do know the answer to their question.

Oftentimes this occurs when an answer to their question could be found more easily, more rapidly, and more accurately, by using the search function.

Now, I am not here to say that people aren’t using Bluelight correctly, rather, I am here to say that;

Bluelight would benefit from the creation of a space where people on the forums could interact with one another in a nonstatic environment.

Discord comes to mind but is very temporally bound, meaning when you jump into the conversation often defines how you’ll understand the conversation because going back and reading for context would then prevent you from reading the present moment and you would lose the present context.

A space on Bluelight for people to engage with other posters that is not separate from the site but connected to it, meaning one must be present on the forum in order to be present in the space, while also allowing people to engage in realtime conversation or specific sub conversations with certain members. Like a chat function for people
Who are logged on to the forums to communicate with other logged on users.

The lounge doesn’t meet the need for a space of this kind. Chat functionality would bring something really special to Bluelight.
 
Implementing a chat separate from the discord would be counterproductive for them. The idea is to shrink the forum's footprint not grow it.
 
I don't know if the forum software allows for something like an embedded live chat. If it did that probably would have been preferable to using external platforms like discord and telegram in the first place (imo) but at this point it might be redundant. Would be interested to know if such a thing would be possible though.

Moving from lounge to STH.
 
Honestly on every forum I've used with a live chat, it seems to become a drama filled, cliquey mess that drives away non regulars.

The same benefit of a live chat, that people can speak to each other without that extra step, also lends itself to firing from the hip and devolving into arguments.

I get the feeling that, if implemented here, it would be 5-10 regulars chatting 12 hours a day and berating anyone that has an unpopular opinion or asks a "stupid" question. I also think that with a live chat, people are a lot less likely to just disengage an argument, so there would be more drama amongst the regulars.

I run a small IRC server attached to another forum I am on, and while it's such a small community that drama is rare, it's still far more effort to moderate than the forum itself usually is.
 
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