Bladers chat

The general Toronto bladers chat was created in early 2021 only for invited skaters.

Reception

Of the 30 active skaters in 2021, 25 joined the platform. The remaining preferred not to use one more new app on their phones as well as preferred real life social contact.

The general chat is closed. There are no plans to bring it back as it was initially created.

2023 assessment

Experience with group activity chats has proven not as effective as intended, whether Discord, Instagram chat, Facebook group, IRC chat, WhatsApp, etc. Other methods are preferred and more successful. In addition to the aforementioned, additional problems arise from group chats, such as but not limited to:

• The more activity the group chat has, the higher the number of members muting and/or snoozing the app, and any relevant messages sent to the chat are missed.
• Using the chat to announce important activities and/or notices results in members missing the announcements due to snoozing the app. This problem always occurs on very active chats that have been muted and/or snoozed. When the member checks the chat, the member does not spend time scrolling through hundreds of past messages to find that one very important announcement and, thus, missing the important announcement again.
• Maintaining and moderating large group chats is resource-intensive, and the downsides outweigh the theoretical and/or ideological benefits. Several well known Facebook group skating chats have been a target of spam and nefarious activities, forcing the admins to change the groups to private mode and create group chats, which, as a consequence, sustain and prove everything stated on this page.
• Not all inline skating events are for the same skaters, equipment, city, or skill. A common announcement chat for everyone would make some skaters feel excluded because they don't have queue equipment for the specific skating event or showing up for something unable to be done, and having several separated chats defeats the idea of a main chat purpose, increases the downsides in addition, it would make members mute the chat faster due to irrelevant content for those that do not match the message.

2022 assessment

• As of the time of this writing, the chat remains closed to accept new members.
• During 2022, the focus will be on building real life interactions without technology.
• Skaters not attending events to skate with us were removed from the chat.
• The chats are not for idling.

2021 assessment

Being on the skaters chat is like being in love; sometimes, we may get carried away, and it will go on forever. However, it can also cause a lot of traffic on mobile devices and synchronization between all the devices of the skater, which may also increase data consumption and overwhelm the person's resources and the skater's attention.

During 2021, a few things were noticed:

• One well-known YouTube skater joined us, intending to bring business to a local store and not to skate with us.
• Borderline skate equipment tension debates on what is best and what is not, by one well known YouTube skater with business interests.
• Rudeness and overstepping one's boundaries by two skaters led to removing one skater and the other leaving after insulting the admin.
• Skaters that joined in only to know about skating activities, which they intended to do on their own and not with the group.
• As the group grew, so did the number of messages and long conversations, which led to some people leaving due to overwhelming text, muting the app notifications, and missing important messages.
• Some skaters prefer the outside real life human social interaction to digital interaction online.
• Skaters going on the chat invite others to a random skate, which will not show up to an event because they already skated another day.
• Last-minute random chat invites don't work because people's schedules, and skaters cannot make it.

During 2022 and perhaps in the future, the chat may be for an organizing team and or the most active skaters that have been grandfathered.

See also

• General chat information and support