Does anyone know? I think they would be great to have... Would anyone like to join me in persuading italki to launch language based or country based chatrooms? What do you think?
Thumb up if you agree!
I totally agree with you, Nick.
Chat room will be great. Wish to chat- go to the chat room, no one force you to correspond with anyone if you don't want.
Due to time difference and hectic schedule it's inconviniet to negotivate talk via Skype. I vote for this innovation on italki.
No.I disagree with you. Italki makes us a language network. It should not be a Social Network.
I agree with you Nick.
Sending messages is very slow to contact to somebody.
It's a good question - actually Nick, I think you've been on here long enough to remember when italki did have chatrooms and so on.
I remember the chat function was slowly reduced and eventually squeezed out of existence. I'm not sure if this was due to programming issues or something, but a pop-out window would be nice. I found it frustrating to deal with one chat when I had several tabs open. The chat didn't update properly when copied across several tabs.
A couple of other language websites seem to use a similarly-functioning chat (with audio and video), but they have their own issues - eg. the chat disconnects when you refresh the main page, or if you start another chat.
Anyway, I'd shuffle that to the suggestion box! :)
Ideally, we wouldn't need to use any software like Skype and just have everything integrated on the website (and an app).
As for the chat rooms, I think it would be a good idea, but how to make them work might be a bit hard. I would like there to be separate rooms for two languages based on what the most common native language plus fluent or near fluent learning language combinations are (e.g. English-Mandarin, English-Arabic, Mandarin-Japanese, etc.). The thing is, I can only really see this be useful for people who are advanced in their language. If they were at different levels (e.g. A1-A2, B1-B2 and C1-C2), I'm not sure it would work. Also, it would be nice if people could reply to someone's individual message to the side of it in the chat room to correct it for them or make an improvement, etc. without making the chat chaotic.
As for how things are now, I tell people straightaway my Skype (which we are stupidly not allowed to put on profiles and discussions, etc.) and avoid sending messages here.
But considering how bad italki are at the simple things, I wouldn't hold my breath for this.
