Removal of chat
From March 10, 2024 to March 17, 2024, the frontpage chat was disabled.
The frontpage chat was disabled again indefinitely on April 26, 2024 following a wave of proxy swarm attacks.
Justification
For a long time, the chat served as the central community hub. With each coming day, the chat was subject to trolling and persistent spamming. These instances of trolling and spamming gradually eroded the chat's foundation and subsequently affected the reputation of OWOT. Instances of trolling included targeted harassment, and instances of spamming included Starianna's CP messages done using residential proxies.
Because of difficulties moderating persistent spamming and trolling, the frontpage chat had to close down on April 26, 2024 to preserve the reputation of the rest of the site and the wellbeing of the community.
Future Plans
There have been talks to disable the Global chat as well for the same exact reasons as listed above. Additionally, the persistent spamming has moved onto Global which creates the same crisis as previously experienced, furthering the need to close down Global as well.
A new feature will soon be released which lets groups of world owners create their own localized global chat.
Community Reception
Pro Removal
wip
Anti Removal
"When I first discovered OWOT, I instantly recognized its potential as an unbounded dumping ground for inspiration. The site in its current state, however, offered little to sustain a fruitful interest in it, save for the chat.
The chat was wonderful, consistently alive with activity and, occasionally, intelligent conversation. The chat kept me on the site, and, eventually, I learned of the existence of the Wiki, the link to which was sadly inconspicuously displayed on the Square of Publicity. I was excited at the prospect of a means by which to document our forays into the vast, uncharted depths of the vestiges of eager, unheard voices that is OWOT.
I am saddened to learn that the chat has been disabled on the front page. Despite the remnants of the chat remaining on other worlds, the chat is inaccessible from the front page, slashing the activity in the chat by half. @FP, I implore you to reconsider your decision to disable the chat, for the sake of the liveliness and wonder that was once OWOT."
Other
On May 3rd 2024, Poopman linked a script on canvas that tries to imitate chat using an embed of canvas. But because of how it worked people could just type over messages and replace what they actually said. The idea was scrapped very quickly, and nobody used it the day after it was introduced.
There were two versions of it, one that put messages below SOP and one that put messages at X: 83521, Y: 83521