Just FYI if people are really angry about guidance to try to avoid devolving into a chat room, my suggestion would be to... create a chat room.
IRC is a very old chat protocol. It's very easy to use. You don't need to download any kind of program. You can just go to
http://www.mibbit.com -- if you all agree on a server and a channel name, you can all chat in it. Most any server is good. Some of the biggest are DALNet and EFNet. There are a variety of gaming-forum/clan/game specific IRC servers so maybe try one of those. You can optionally register nicknames and set up in-chatroom moderators if those things are important to you.
Simple commands:
/join #channelname = join a channel. Mibbit also has a GUI way to do this
/me text goes here = * Yourname does this (used to differentiate text used for "actions" like "Stumpokapow is playing Seinfeld: The Facebook Game" versus regular sentences)
/nick newnickname = Changes your nickname to new nickname
Because Mibbit does IRC through the web, there's no risk of work filtering IRC as a service. They can still block the website, of course, but mostly employers don't so it's easy to keep a tab open.
This has been done in many times past, for different groups on GAF; sometimes people start an IRC chat room for E3, or for Smash Bros, or for whatever else. I know some of the other groups use Steam chats, like Aus (Australia)-GAF. Steam chat works really well too, and since Steam is a free service almost everyone here probably has, it'd be a great and easy way to set up a chat room.
Personally I think there are a lot of things chat rooms are better for than forums. Live watching events or TV shows, for example, can be done on forums (and is always fun on GAF) but it's probably better in a chat room. One advantage to a chat room is that once text scrolls off screen, people don't generally pay attention to it, and new people joining don't see text posted before they join, so it keeps conversation fresh and avoids the way a negative post or controversial post can derail things on a forum. I don't do a lot of "social" posting on GAF simply because forums aren't as good at this stuff as chat rooms are!
The guidance for avoiding devolving into a chat room is not something that's unique to this thread. It's something that's given to a lot of general purpose threads. It's given to the Steam thread. It's been given to a lot of the threads that have now moved to Community and it's given to threads that are currently in Community. It's not about ad impressions--and WOW it's really cynical to respond with "I'm giving you ad impressions, why do you care what we post?"--it's about generally keeping a good mix of topics on the front page, encouraging new users to participate, avoiding subcommunities getting too closed, etc. One of the reasons why GAF grew so fast and continues to grow is because despite the arduous registration/approval requirements, moderation generally favours making things accessible and open rather than closed or cliquish. I'm not trying to use the word clique negatively or infer that you guys are one, just to say that historically threads that devolve into chatting can be imposing to users who aren't a part of them. Side-note: It's amazing how angry people get about the smallest moderation decisions and how personally people take it!
Just expressing my personal opinion, this thread is time limited so I think it's less of an issue that something more open-ended, but no one is insulting anyone here by suggesting that there might be more appropriate fora for chat-style discussion. I really do recommend you guys get a chat channel, you seem to be fast friends and IRC is one of the best ways to turn a forum buddy into more of a long term friend.
I have not been involved in any moderation decision EviLore mentioned in PM, defer to what he said over me. I'm not breaking ranks or anything here, just offering my own personal opinion and explaining the rationale we've used historically to explain why we prefer threads in general stay relatively on topic. No need to quote me or take this as something official. Again, not official, not me moderating. Just giving some friendly advice and opinion
I browse Gaf intermittently and this was a nice thread to just come back and shoot the shit in a very slow way. In chat rooms everything just gets swallowed up by the new and it's pointless to be in there if everyone isn't in there as well. With RP I can follow up on old conversations in a natural way and at my own pace. Not a fan of the hectic feel of real chats. And, in most chats do you even 'see' who you're talking to? On TinyChat it was just user names if you didn't do the live feed. What would be the point of having an RP chat if our avatars didn't show? (Not that this is the main issue, though) :/