Hey guys i couldn't really find a link or anything about the fanpop chat, so this is basically my guide about the functions, a bit about etiquette and a few tips thrown in here and there. I have also researched a list of all the meebo emotions and all the different keyboard shortcuts for the users that where asking, hopefully some of you will find it useful. You don't need to check everything out, although it appears lengthier than it is, everything is, as always set in to subheadings for those of you who like to scan articles :D, enjoy.
The rooms
The rooms are ran by a company called meebo and we now have quite a few of them. There is of course the main fanpop room which can be accessed from the homepage on the right just above the quizzes or from this link
http://www.fanpop.com/chat
They're are a few other rooms and i believe there have been requests for more, these rooms below can all be accessed by the links below or from the spot home page, again on the right above the quiz questions and forums. If you open a chat from a home page rather than the link, it will open in it's own seperate box instead of tab or new window. The other rooms are;
the office chat
the one tree hill chat
the twilight chat
the fanpop users chat
The Functions
The chat is nice and simple and fairly easy to use , so this may seem slightly patronising to some people but i have been asked a couple of things before and in doing research i have also found a couple of things out myself, so i thought i would write all of the functions and my findings down.
The Colors-The user names in the chat are several different colors, there seems to be no meaning to this and are completley random. You can change your color if you really wish to do so by signing in and out. You can sign in and out by either simply refreshing the page or by clicking the small green button in the top right corner.
Warns-You can warn someone by hovering over their username. Warns are designed to literally warn a user when they are behaving badly e.g. spamming, abusive language. Fanpop was told that if a user was warned over a certain amount of times they would be "muted" aka they would not be allowed to type anymore in the chat. There are a couple of users though who have been warned so many times, one user over 50 times! so if you get warned for nothing (yes there are some out there immature enough to do that for fun) don't worry about it. If you do get warned though it's always worth reading your last couple of messages to see if you could have been doing something to annoy or upset a fellow user. Warns are completely anonymous, even if you use the warn button in a private message it will appear in the main chat not the PM.
PMs-Again to personally message someone you can hover over their username. Only the two of you can see that conversation and you can not invite other users. You can warn and block someone directly from the PM box. As said above any warns done via the PM box will appear in the main chat. If you block someone and then send them a private message it automatically unblocks them. Anything written in private message will not be censored.
Blocking-Again to block someone you hover over their profile. When you block someone you can no longer see anything they write in chat neither will you see anything they message to you, if you unblock them the messages will NOT reappear. You can unblock them the exact same way, messaging someone will also unblock them. When you have been blocked your self you will not know, it will be completley unknown to other users also. A user will stay blocked even if you sign off and then back on again.
Censoring-Meebo chat rooms have fairly strict censors and a lot of stuff can set them off, just for reference here's a couple of words you might not expect to be censored
-Homo("Homosexual" will appear as "****sexual")
-queer
-penis and vagina
-niga (so if you write "alyson hanigan" it appears as "alyson ha****n")
-porn
-sh it (yes even if you make a space in the middle it will star it out e.g. "finish it" will appear as "fini****")
and oh yes "dick van dyke" will appear as "**** van ****"
These are just stupid stuff but obviously you can get around these by typing with spaces inbetween letters e.g. say you wished to talk about "q u e e r as folk" you would have to talk like that so people can see what you talking about.
When you type a message you will be able to see what you have written but others it will appear starred, except for in private messages where everything is uncensored.
A Couple of Little Extras
The chat does have sound, the on/off button can be seen in the bottom left. When someone types on the main chat it will make a small click, when someone PMs you it will make a bleep noise. I find this useful if you enter the chat and are the only user in the chat, you can then turn the sound so when someone else comes in you will hear them and not miss them. It is also useful if your PMing more than one user.
You can access a fanpopper's profile again by hovering over their name
When you first enter the chat you can read about half a page of conversation to catch up with what has been said
There is a small smiley face to the right of your message box, this allows you to add certain smilies to your message. For a full list see below.
My Opinion on Etiquette
These are just a couple of etiquette suggestions, from my own opinion and from what i have gathered from others, they are in no way rules just something to consider.
Spamming-Spam can be anything from repeating the same comment, sending the same link over and over or simply just writing gibberish. It is annoying and unnecessary just like any kind of spam and may be a reason for warnings or being blocked. If someone excessively does this after being warned and informed i suggest you report them via their profile.
Chat speak-Although i understand fully this is a chat room, fanpop still has many users who's first language is not english and it will be hard enough for some of them to follow the speed of the chatroom without the difficulties of chat speak as well so please try and avoid it. Though I'm sure everyone understands that typing quickly often leads to mistakes....I, myself will probably make loads in this proof read article...my apologies for any :S
Specific Rooms-There have been specific chat rooms created so people can talk about specific topics with out annoying other chatters, these are mentioned above. If there is not a specific chat room for your interest and there is only one person in the room you wish to talk about this topic to, you can always send them a private message. If the room is pretty much split then i suggest asking the F4 for another specific chat room and in the mean while trying to find a empty chat room. There is normally one somewhere and i see no harm in using it untill more fans enter.
Warns-Warning someone for no reason is not clever and as i stated above seems to result in nothing. Do not do this it's annoying to other chatters and it's frankly completely pointless. Warnings are reserved to show people they are not behaving properly in the chat. If you really have a problem with someone about something like spamming the chat, i suggest you block them and report them on their profile and add some notes so the Fanpop team know why.
emotions/emotes/smilies-Emotes or emotions or smilies, what ever you want to call them can be fun and a good way to communicate something quickly or most importantly to express you tone, something not done easily through chat. However although i realise finding new emotes is exciting for some of you, it does become very spam like and annoying if you test them all out repeatably.
Full list of emotions/emotes/smilies
Below is a full list of meebo smilies and all the shortcuts to them. I would have posted this as a link but i couldn't find a full list where all of them worked correctly, so by combining different lists and sources and testing shortcuts by messaging myself (oh yes I'm crazy) I have managed to put this together.
Oh I also couldn't find images for them all so some are my makeshift paint stuff so my apologies for the weird looking ones, they do look better on chat, I assure you.
The Emotes Box
These are the emotes that you can find in the box to the right of the message box, as mentioned above. Although i realize you can already use all of these I thought it would be useful to add the other shortcuts for them as some are easier to type than or others or than clicking on the box.
- (smile) :) :-) =) =-)
- :D :-D (grin)
- (cool) B) B-) 8) 8-)
- :-> :>
- (arr) (arrr) (pirate)
- (wink)
- :P :-P
- (lol) x-D X-D :)) LOL
- :S :-S :s :-s
- :-* :*
- (sarcasm) /:) /:-)
- (neutral) :| :-|
- :T :-T
- :x :X :-X :-x
- (sad) :( :-(
- :'D
- :'(
- (hmm)
- :\
- (emo) //:|
- (rapper)
- :)>-
- (ninja)
- (skull)
- (pacman)
- (ghost)
- (m) 8(|)
- (panda)
- :@)
other faces
- (angel) O:)
- (evil) (devil) >:) >>:) >>:-) >:-)
- (mad) >>:( >:( >>:-( >:-(
- (angry) >:o
- (eek) (shock) (yikes) :o :O :-o
- :-B :B :-b :b (nerd)
- $) $-) (money)
- :-& +o( (sick)
- L-) (loser)
- |-) (sleepy)
- (liar) :^o :^O
- (beaten) b-(
- (O_O) (O.O)
- (o.O) (O.o)
- (nerdpirate)
random stuff
- (love) (l)
- (unlove) (u)
- (bender)
- (genderbender)
- (doraemon)
- (ultimatefrisbee)
- (rockyou)
I would just like to say special thanks to gerley123, DarkSarcasm, pollyloveshouse and spotty_vision21 for helping me test a couple of things in the chat room.
Also thanks to meebo, wikipedia and computer-erase for some of the information in this article as well as a quick mention to David Vignoni who designed and created all the emotions shown above.
If anyone knows of any other or new spot specific chat rooms, emotes or features or is just has a question or is still confused by something could you please comment as i would like to keep this as updated and informative as possible, thankyou :D
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i love my bender icon....
well done debs is that why you kept on blocking spotty earlier..?
awsome debs :D ♥
Wonderful article.
splendid splendid work as usual my dear
dick van dyke show i say!!
brilliant article helped me oot a lot, will favorite it for future reference oh how i love me a good infobox!!
<complain>It's really irritating that you can't create your own private chat areas on the fly - that's certainly a standard chat feature, and it boggles my mind that you can't do it here. It's also bizarre that there's only emoticons, and no way to execute expressions or actions (*). Without actions, chat seems a little boring. Without private chat (with multiple members), this chat is unusable...which is why I haven't done any more of it.</complain>
* - For those who've only done web-based chat like this or various IM clients, expressions are a way of typing something that then shows up as a sentence describing what you're doing, rather than conversation "spoken" by you. For example, by default in chat, anything you type shows up as something you "say". I type "What do you mean??" and it shows up as:
harold: What do you mean??
But with most chat systems, you can type something like "#wave" and it would show up as:
harold waves happily.
In addition, you can direct your actions, such as "#slap DrDevience", which would show up as:
harold slaps DrDevience.
Not that I would ever do that, you understand...just that DrD is so happy to hand out the slaps that it was the first thing that occurred to me. Don't kill me, Lars! But with our chat, we have to resort to putting our actions into quotes like stage directions in a play:
harold: (high-fives hooch)
which just isn't as satisfying.
i completely agree with you on the actions idea and ever more so with the being able to hold privat chats where you can invite who you wish, on the few chats i have been on where you can do that it is much more fun :D
i'm sure drd won't mind but if they ever introduce that feature (*fingers crossed*) expect to see
"drd hits harold with her cane"
and oh yes "dick van dyke" will appear as "**** van ****" --
cracked me up.
Thanks for the tips, debs!
and your welcome guys :)
err took me a good part of yesterday but twas kinda fun messing around in chat :)
aaand i would like to be able to have a bigger window for the private chat. if someone writes a loger response you have to scroll to read it..since my fave users dont use chatspeak *hugs*
i know one of the f4 changed the window right at the beginning- i think it was one of the f4..*wonders* can they dooo that? like they magic everything else?
I myself of course don't need it (*wink, wink), I do believe I conduct myself in an appropriate manner at all times and offer stimulating conversation (*cough, cough). Let's not forget of course, ny inspiration for the panda game which I am proud to say I initiated. Hope you do agree with EVERYTHING i've stated ???
Anywho, thanks again! Also for the list of emots.
Warning: if you use chat speak, I will use my own version of chat speak to reply. Or speak in German if Germania is present.
thank you! xx
Will you be a fan of me?
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