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I have been thinking about this for a while but didn't want to have another chatroom that no one frequented which would then fizzle and die.

Now that is starting to take off this idea might have a more permanent place. Our first community project was Community Project: Lets build a workbench!. Discussion was leaning towards keeping the answers lean to stimulate discussion and other questions. Trying to avoid a blog like posts about the entire process thereby keeping meta meta.

Do you think we should have a second chatroom that we would use for project pictures? So if anyone had worked on something and wanted to show it to the community they would have a place to showcase it. It would still exist to help stimulate other questions which would stay true to the concept of Community Projects?

We could call it:

  • The ShowRoom
  • Matt's Place
  • The Art House
  • Stuffatorium

I am not hot on any of those name just spit balling.

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    As I mentioned in chat, I think this is a great idea.
    – rob Mod
    Commented Apr 30, 2015 at 16:40
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    I like it. I'd call it 'Swollen Thumbs"!
    – bowlturner Mod
    Commented Apr 30, 2015 at 16:40
  • Assuming others are all on board with starting the chat room, we could start posting individual names as answers.
    – rob Mod
    Commented Apr 30, 2015 at 20:29
  • As best as I can tell 3 people are for this. You, bowlturner and me.
    – Matt
    Commented Apr 30, 2015 at 20:53
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    Personally, I feel like we should just keep all the chat to "The Workshop" so far. If it gets too trafficked for site items, maybe then we talk about a separate chat room. Chat rooms are pretty easy to start up. It's harder to get people to go to a chat room if it doesn't have a lot of traffic.
    – Peter Grace
    Commented May 1, 2015 at 2:18
  • @PeterGrace I was worried that having the one chat room would be saturated and good conversation could be dwarfed by pictures. But we can keep this on the back burner.
    – Matt
    Commented May 1, 2015 at 2:29
  • Matt, I agree with @PeterGrace. See my answer below meta.woodworking.stackexchange.com/questions/214/…
    – Robert Cartaino
    Commented May 1, 2015 at 13:54

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Maybe someday, but now is not the time to split the existing chat room.

If is the hot new thing, you should leverage that popularity to bootstrap your main chat room. Bootstrapping one chat room is difficult enough, so I would not suggest splitting it into two.

I routinely see 3-15 hour gaps of inactivity in your main chat room, so you're not even close to achieving the network effects needed for it to be widely useful. When someone enters an empty chat room, they'll often just leave… usually forever.

I wouldn't split your existing chat room to make another. If you are anticipating overcrowding in your main chat room, that's a pretty high-quality problem. But I wouldn't create even more underutilized spaces to handle people who have not materialized yet. Leverage what you have now, or you may end up with no useful spaces at all. Good luck!

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  • Fine by me. Back burner is fine. It's my first beta
    – Matt
    Commented May 1, 2015 at 14:05
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    Absolutely agree, from past experience moderating other discussion systems. Start it as a topic within the existing chat, and break it off when it is clear gnat it can be self-sustaining and is active enough that it's interfering with other activity. Splitting too soon is the surest way I know to kill a topic.
    – keshlam
    Commented May 3, 2015 at 15:31
  • @keshlam Was not something I considered. Yeah the room is not busy now. Keep it all in one place until it becomes too saturated.
    – Matt
    Commented May 4, 2015 at 14:02

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