# Speccing out a full page chat plugin

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/speccing-out-a-full-page-chat-plugin/49430
**Category:** Development
**Created:** [8월 29, 2016, 2:28오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/speccing-out-a-full-page-chat-plugin/49430 "2016-08-29T14:28:09Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 2

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### Author: ![erlend\_sh](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/erlend_sh/32/119475_2.png) [@erlend\_sh](https://meta.discourse.org/u/erlend_sh)
#### Post date: [8월 30, 2016, 10:31오전 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/speccing-out-a-full-page-chat-plugin/49430/2 "2016-08-30T10:31:07Z")

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‘4’ and ‘5’ are both on the very top of my Discourse chat wishlist, but I don’t think they’re critical for a v1.0. If anything, ‘5’ should come before ‘4’.

[meta.discourse.org](http://meta.discourse.org) is the most natural place to test the prototype of such a chat (as we did with Babble), and the sub-community most amenable to chat in Meta is the #lounge (which I think should be expanded to include user types like serial contributors, but that’s a different topic). And all we need for that is **one chatroom**. I hope we can agree that this is the MVP.

Will gladly talk through these other designs on the side though!

> [@angus](#):
>
> In terms of chat ‘Channels’ one thought I have is that having an entirely separate hierarchy may be a bit confusing. I’m thinking it would be best to tie the chat channels into the existing Discourse hierarchy in some way.

Agreed. Linking to tags could get hairy though so I think “all categories” and “individual categories” would be best for starters. DropBox’s [Zulip chat app](https://zulip.org/) has an interesting concept of “threaded group conversations”, and it’s not the scary kind of threading that we Discoursians despise:

 ![](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/3X/c/4/c46c3c81ecb38ce8bf4c1143367b579c5ae2b788.png)

I don’t have a perfect solution in mind yet, but I definitely think this is a solvable problem. That being said, figuring out ways to incorporate tag/topic-specific discussions is “next-gen” territory as far as I’m concerned.

> [@angus](#):
>
> I’m not quite sure how channels with users or groups of users would work yet.  
> (…)  
> I think it would be best to keep ‘private messages’ and ‘private channels’ separate.

I think Facebook Messages is a great example of a chat/pm hybrid.

 ![](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/3X/c/6/c6bd3b70b5ddd54307aaab5030c00d2ecd6eb593.png)

It’s always the same conversation, but in different gears. And when a user is posting a series of uninterrupted replies, maybe we could automatically [merge them together](https://meta.discourse.org/t/add-a-merge-multiple-responses-admin-post-selection-action/14904).

Discourse PMs are already super powerful; they’re basically what I always wanted Google Wave to be. I’m not keen on adding a competing conversation stream into the mix. All we need is a few more “live” features built into PMs, like presence info and opt-in quick-reply.

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