7

A proposed feature

After Vince suggested to a user who had a question that it could be treated as a nice open discussion on the chat, I tried to search for it on our main page.

I found only two occurrences of the word 'chat'. One of them being a featured element on the right (which might not last forever). The other is at the really bottom (<- link to a screenshot of the home page) of the page, hidden in the middle of some other small textual elements. It is also available with a two-clicks action by the "A list of the 175 Stack Exchange sites" button. Newcomers have to guess it's hidden there.

I would therefore suggest that the chat is given more prominence, for example with a 1-click direct access at the top of the home page, or close to the personal icons, for example before the inbox:

Chat enhanced visibility

I hope our community is able to modify this kind of feature, but I can understand if we depend on decisions of others (understand by this, 'external' people from the GIS community).

Linked discussion

need guidance in joining the gis chat room

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
6

This is not something in the SE user interface that we at GIS can modify, and so your feature request is best posted at the network-wide Meta Stack Exchange.

I thought I would quickly find a feature request (probably declined) there but all I've found so far is:

In the meantime we have this Meta GIS SE Q&A to help our users find the GIS Chat Rooms:

I am not a great fan of chat rooms (here or elsewhere) but as a moderator I feel obliged to look in on ours frequently. Of the three main components of GIS SE I think it is significantly less important than the other two and its lack of prominence suggests to me that the Stack Overflow company may hold similar views. This is where I think the GIS Chat Room fits alongside the Main and Meta sites:

  1. Main site of GIS SE - is for focused Q&A and frequently moderated by many GIS SE users (including its eight elected moderators)
  2. Meta site of GIS SE - is for discussion and focused Q&A about how the Main site works, and occasionally moderated by a much smaller number of GIS SE users (including its eight elected moderators)
  3. GIS Chat Room - is for anything you wish to ask or discuss about GIS, and is rarely/never moderated. If anyone has trouble framing a question for focused Q&A this is the place to post it and you may find someone willing to help you work through it.
1

There is already a quick link to Chat, from the hamburger menu at top-right. From this menu you get quick access to Main, Meta, Help, and Chat, plus other SE communities you are active in.

enter image description here

2
  • 3
    That's the "two-clicks action" s.k. wrote about. And it is rather hidden, yes.
    – Erik
    Commented Apr 15, 2020 at 11:37
  • 2
    @Erik Yes it is the two-click action from the Question, however I would argue against it being "rather hidden" - I would think that typically a standard webpage menu would be one of the first places to look for something (and therefore not really "hidden"), but perhaps that's just me.
    – Midavalo Mod
    Commented Apr 19, 2020 at 21:33

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .