Lorchen wrote:
As a CHATTY person, I am often in a chat room several evenings a week between 9:30 to 10pm..sometimes up til almost midnight . Now, before U go and say anything, my hubby is an over the road trucker and therefore gone most of the time, so NO I am not ignoring him. We are also empty nesters and although the dogs are wonderful, they really aren't much for a good conversation, LOL, so this site has been a wonderful outlet for me.

We have had a group that have made very close friendships thru TQS and the chatrooms give us a place to converse, catch up on personal family happenings, talk quilts, sewing in general and well, just basically everything. In the past when we were in a room, we always made the 1st move and stopped our conversation to say hello. After being bitten by quite a few disgruntled TQS members; then trying to catch what we call "chat surfers" who come in like an ocean wave and leave just as fast without saying anything and before we even have time to type a welcome to them and hit the enter button, so we finally decided that if the person coming in was truely wanting to chat they would say hello, maybe let us know they are new to chat and away we go in conversation. Another thing to look for is the status of the members, if there is a clock by their name, it means they have stepped away for a while intending to come back or in our case sometimes, we have connected to chat about something personal and so we are chatting privately.

All chatrooms are open to every member, I personally am hanging out in blockswappers breakroom most of the time because the swappers are friends that met here in Feb of last yr and swapped thru TQS forum once, then found it sew much fun that we decided we wanted to keep going, so one of the swappers set up an outside site on yahoo with database & files capabilities to keep our swaps organized. Later in the yr, I asked Lilo to check and see if we could have a room to chat about our swaps and also in hopes it would inspire others to start more swap groups thru TQS and have the opportunity to make such wonderful long lasting close personal friendships that we have been blessed with thru this wonderful site. One of the closest friendships I have made is even from your home turf of the UK.

Lorchen, I am sorry about your experience, but don't take it personal and especially don't give up on the chat rooms as the experience you had was NOT the norm. Don't be shy, when you go into a room, just jump right in with your hello and they'll know you are really interested in joining a friendly chat and watch for theose clocks that tell you what the status of the members in the room are. We will be chatting again tomorrow night, but unfortunately it will be about 4am your time, but if your up, please come join us. We would love to chat with you and hear about all the UK happenings in your area.

Not Chatty Cathy, but be a close cousin, lol

Linda in SD where fall is arriving as we had the most gorgeous harvest moon to watch while driving home with the top down on the car 2nite. Yes, dh home, but he is off snoring as he blew in about 3pm, we got ready, went to town and cooked/grilled a fab meal for our friends at their place for their anniversary and now he must be up and out the door by 7am to leave for the west coast again.

Is there a time delay from the time you enter til the others can "see" you? on screen?

Is the chat room open to everyone or just paid members? Are their restrictions on posting privileges?

If the chat room is open to everyone why does some one not say in advance

JOIN ME FOR A CHAT, 8PM EST so others can maybe come to the chat site and join you?? I know on other chat sites that is how they organize chats ahead of time.

Lorchen,
I have noticed some of the times that I've been in a chat room that when someone comes in and shows up on my screen, the time stamp is several minutes earlier than when they show up. I don't know why that is. But, yes, if they had seen you come in, they should have said hello at least.
Frances

Lorchen,
While I agree there's no excuse for poor behavior I have experienced a few times the following:
people leaving the computer for various reasons and not coming back
people being stuck in the chat room and not being able to communicate
and people coming in and not being seen as being there and therefore not welcomed
I'm not sure what happened tonight, I do hope that next time you're in the chat room everything is working well.

Teri

I have just managed to find some people in one of the chatrooms for the very first time. I was quite excited. There were about 8 members listed, but only two of them talking. I thought that the normal thing in a chatroom is to say 'hello' to anybody new coming in. I waited for several minutes, read the conversation and then plucked up my courage and said 'Hi'. Nothing...... A few minutes later the two quilters finished their conversation and left the room. I must admit that I felt ignored. Am I over-sensitive here or do we need to state somewhere what polite behaviour in a chatroom should be like??

Lorchen