Posted 12/9/2009 6:07 PM (GMT 0)
Look at it this way: The Wednesday night session is scheduled, so people can put it on their calendar and know it will be there each week at 9pm EST. Having it scheduled also gives you priority if the 20 member limit is reached. So, a scheduled time is helpful for creating a regular and known time for us, and giving us priority, if a bunch of others from other forums came around then. If they do come around and flood the chat room that we have scheduled for Prostate Cancer Forum, they can be informed that this period is reserved for PCa Forum, and they can go to another room. There isn't just one big chat room that everyone shares, each seperate disease/condition Forum area can have their own, as long as the total number of members in all the rooms don't exceed 20 members. As you may have seen, having a Prostate Cancer Forum chat room open does attract others from outside our Forum area, people who are roaming around looking for people to talk to. Of course, we don't want to be rude to people for no good reason, by telling outsiders to go elsewhere, as did happen one time, and then we discovered that that person did have a relative who had PCa and was wanting to join for info, but was told they couldn't because it was a scheduled time. We just need to remember to ask a couple questions before shooting from the hip. But that's maybe too much information for now.
Now then, we also can have a chat anytime the urge hits, it just depends on who is around who wishes to chat with you when you request. Anytime you feel chatty, just make a post, like jetguy did last night, and go to the Prostate Cancer chat room and wait to see if anyone comes around. Make sense?