The problem with Newsvine's chat function

Yes, I also noticed the same problem. I guess that the idea should be something like "I'm willing to discuss this article with someone, so I enter the chat and wait until someone else decides to enter".
But I agree on the fact that such a behaviour is highly unlikely.

I don't think that there would be a problem, because people want to flaunt off their opinions. If the Vine gets as popular as many are predicting, then as high as hundreds of people are reading an article at high times, and there is bound to be someone that wants to discuss it. Especially with posts, as those are mostly editorials, and much more to debate over. Also, I'm sure a lot of authors would sit in their Chat (if they received enough traffic to their blog) such as Carl Howe, seeing as everyone flocks to him.

I agree.

It might be an idea to have the "auto joining" feature turned on by default, but if you don't want to be added to the chat automatically their could be an option to turn it off in the user's Profile.

I can see the value in having a chat room, especially in the case where a big news event takes place (i.e. Sept. 11, Columbia tragedy, etc.). Big events usually bring everyone out of the woodwork.

One thing that might be neat is to have chat rooms for tags, rather than stories. This way one might be able to discuss broad topics rather than one specific article.

In the mean time, it's too bad there isn't a generic chat room available for beta users to just, well, chat.

Maybe generic chat rooms for each of the major categories (World, U.S., Sports and so forth) could be done. At least there would be some common interest as a starting point.

I thought I would give the chat feature a test. I opened three chats belonging to top stories in various categories and checked in on them over the course of 10 minutes. Finally after 10 minutes one person joined, I said hello, and they left. I agree with the request for tag based chats and I see the value in the chat feature during major news events.

OT: It would be cool to have a wiki-like post for major news events, like the UK Tube bombings. Wikipedia jumps on those and has up to date information as the story progresses.

So I noticed five people in the chat room here and decided to join...

Unfortunately, once I joined, the chat interface did not appear to work. The screen shows up, but the list of members and chat area are blank.

Has anyone else experienced similar problems?

blank for me too

It is very likely that the only real way to get an article jumping is

1) The article must be popular. Either catchy headlines, lots of comments, or a "heat of the moment" article.
and
2) Some ones got to start up the chat.

Both options have been mentioned -- the solution to #2, and the easiest most logical one, is that the AUTHORS should be in the chat. I haven't posted yet, but if after posting an article, the author is sent back to this page, they should just automatically be joined to the chat. Maybe they'll stick around.

It may also be worth having a feature that notifies authors of people in their chats: ex: "Your article "blah blah" has 3 people in chat. Join them." or some other such jargon.

For users, you may do something similar and allow them an option to be notified of people in chat on articles they've recently commented on. That may be a little out there, but it'd be a solution for users.

I like the suggestion of auto-join, but I would make it a half-auto-join (I know it sounds wierd) so when you open the page, it shows everyone else that you are reading the article. That way you would have a way to see if anyone is even on the other side to press 'join', as you probably won't spend minutes waiting for someone to open the same article, notice the chat count and click join.

Or perhaps, while you are reading, the chat count auto updates every, say, 60 seconds.

i like the option to auto join but i do agree it needs some work. I think the idea of chatting is great but getting people to join is the biggest key issue at hand.

Auto-joning is the key i guess.

I have no way to prove this, but I think that the main problem is to get the first user in the chat. The others will just arrive as a consequence (as Mike said).
This is why I don't think it will be useful to notice the authors when someone is in "their" chatroom: if someone is in the chatroom, then the problem is already solved.

Showing the number of users currently browsing an article could be a better solution, avoiding the feeling of "jumping into blackness" when joining an empty chatroom. This will work as long as the other users are in some way noticed that one of their fellow newsviners has joined the room, of course.

Auto-joining is a solution I don't like too much, because:
1) I don't want software to do something I didn't tell him to do
2) Auto-joining would slow down the loading of a page: even users who are not willing to use the chat at all will be forced to wait. And for EVERY article.

You are definitely spot on about the chat feature. There should be a viewable count of how many readers are currently on an article page.