In light of a suggestion made recently by Fizzeh, I've been considering other ways to maybe improve the shoutbox advertisement system.
I wondered if maybe an
entirely separate chat for ads would be a good idea. I've seen it on a couple other sites and it works pretty well. There would be a regular Chat, and then an Advertisement Chat on a separate tab. In the regular chat only conversation and general banter would be allowed, and the Advertisement Chat would have an automatic timer (like Fizzeh said) so that people can only post once every 30 minutes no matter how hard they try. ;)
This way, staff wouldn't have to keep track of times, they'd just have to remind a user to only advertise in the Advertisement Chat. The only thing that staff would need to do in terms of advertisements is make sure that users aren't using profanity in the Advertisement Chat or anything along those lines.
AND, bonus: Users who don't want to see advertisements at all won't have to.
Users who are looking for specific things will be able to check the Advertisement Chat to see if anything they need is there instead of watching other users' conversation for ages.
Users looking to sell something will be able to post their ad and have it not get immediately swept away by conversation.
Everyone wins!
I'm sure there are flaws with this, but I like the idea. Thoughts, suggestions, critique?
(Link to Fizzeh's suggestion: http://www.rescreatu.com/forum/cat/feedback/suggestions/shoutbox-advertisements/~page/1/)
Hope it doesn't look like I'm sniping this idea, I just think we could work off of it! c: