Chat Rooms (Policy)

[Jon Knight]

On Mon, 23 Mar 1998, Filtering Facts wrote:
> I will say though that there seem to be a lot more legitimate uses for
> e-mail than there are for chat. I have yet to see a chat session that wasn't
> idle chatter.

Just to put in my tuppence: many chat rooms are idle chatter and I've
avoided them for years on just those grounds (I've better things to do
with my time).  However just recently we ran up a private IRC server for a
project I work on and a couple of us hacker types have had some
productive afternoons actually crafting code inside the IRC channels.
It actually worked really well, especially as its very easy to write Perl
based IRC "bots" that can spot key phrases in the chat session and then go
off and do some useful work (one of my collegues bolted our WHOIS++ client
code into a SIRC bot and we could do searches of the quality
assessed subject gateways that the eLib programme and other fund).

When compared to some of the dross that appears on some "serious" mailing
lists (the IETF one springs to mind at the moment where its open season on
kooks) and time people waste looking for tantalising tidbits on the Web, 
I'd say our chat sessions were pretty productive.  They were certainly a
good way of doing away with a face to face meeting, which in turn means
less travelling, which in turn is good for both the planet and my
schedule.  So its what you do with the technology rather than the
technology itself that determines how useful it is IMHO.

Just another data point for you all.

Tatty bye,

Jim'll

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Jon "Jim'll" Knight, Researcher, Sysop and General Dogsbody, Dept. Computer
Studies, Loughborough University of Technology, Leics., ENGLAND.  LE11 3TU.
* I've found I now dream in Perl.  More worryingly, I enjoy those dreams. *