Over the course of this past weekend, Leland of Themelab.com launched a new website called WPChat.com. The site consists of a simple design which almost takes minimalism to a new level but I like it. The chatroom loads on the index page enabling you to choose any nickname you want without registration. This has a pro-con effect where registration is not required but there is no way to validate someone is who they say they are. This has happened already and ends up leading the discussion to a point where a pop quiz is offered to the person to validate their name. Leland is currently taking feedback to figure out how to resolve this problem as well as whether or not he should replace the chat with an IRC based one while keeping a web client to access the channel.
Those small issues aside, I’ve already participated in a few heated conversations regarding themes as well as a number of other topics. So if the Tavern is having a slow day, I’ll now know why.
Thanks for posting about this Jeff. Every time someone comes in with the username “Matt” for example, the chat gets pretty sidetracked as they’re wondering if it’s the Matt, someone else named Matt, or an impersonator.
Still a little torn on what to do, even requiring registration won’t completely solve the problem. It will at least help a bit if say, they post on their Twitter account confirming they have registered a certain username at WP Chat.