We have decided to remove the integrated chat from CodinGame. For 3 main reasons:
the chat is the result of an old project coded by an intern many years ago. It’s not easily maintainable and we don’t want to invest in it
the chat lacks moderation tools and unfortunately spam and slurs are regular
Discord which exists since 2018, at the demand of some players, has everything to become the main discussion place for the community
I know this chat has an history and I’m sure you remember many fond moments there. I do. You should know it was a tough decision. I’ll keep you updated of the exact date of the removal, it should happen in June.
Too bad you decided to remove it, it’s the first thing i look when i come, it makes your platform alive. Very enjoyable during a clash, a puzzle, a multiplayer !
I’m on this website mostly for the fruitfull interactions with the players, #world as well as #fr chat taught me a lot. Nothing is best than interacting with other players on several puzzles and tricks to code better. Moderation can be fixed, with more players on it. I’m not on discord, and the CG discord is pretty dead, with several similar moderation issues. Why not make a participative project to build a codingame chat, done by the users ? Maybe it is an idea, maybe it’s stupid.
The chat in my humble opinion the most important feature of the plattform, for attractiveness, mutual progression, learning, even a form o f friendship, and i’m afraid to see the community die along with it…
You must understand my position. Part of my job is to provide a place for people to interact, learn and have fun together, and ensure it remains safe and friendly.
When I have no option to delete spam comments, when banned people can come back in 3 minutes to disturb the chat, when certificate renewals take it down… I cannot do that.
I’m convinced Discord can offer the same experience, and even a better one; it did during a few challenges. Today it mainly suffers from having 2 discussion spaces.
I’m open to suggestions on how to organize the server and improve it.
I think CG is shooting themselves in the foot with the chat removal. The community is part of the capital of CG, and I feel Discord is not an alternative to maintain the community. Without it, what does CG have over other coding sites with more frequent contests?
I also think requiring a minimum level (5, 8, 10?) to be able to write in the chat would have solved the spam.
The integrated chat for clashes is the main thing keeping me on the site. Being able to discuss solutions in real time without navigating away from the puzzle space makes for an enjoyable experience, and provides instant response potential.
Getting a reply to a question about a clash when you’re 15 clashes later seems like it would hurt both experiences.
I really hope this feature comes back in one way or another, in hopefully a more maintainable state. The coding challenges are what brought me to this site, and kept me busy the first few days, but the chat is what made me stay. I’ve had discussions about CoC games, chatted with the regulars in world chat, I’ve been responsible for some nice eureka-moments when I explained something about a puzzle or coding concept, and it’s in that same chat I read that it would be removed.
Discord sounds like a good alternative, but I don’t believe it can serve the same purpose of being a very accessible place to interact with the community. On top of that, many users are outright refusing to switch to discord.
I think CG is very dependent on its community. For me, a big part of the community is the chat. If you remove the chat, the community dies a bit, and CG suffers in return.
I understand that the chat experience was bad for a few weeks, even I got a bit tired of it sometimes, but I still feel like this is the wrong approach for the chat problem.
Last month(June) I practically didn’t have to ban anyone, I don’t know if anything changed on chat restrictions or not.
I think before removing the chat a few things could be tested (I’m not sure if this was done before or not), for example: higher level requirement, email verification, require the account to be N days old.
Maybe some more things could be done but these are the ones that come to the top of my head.
At the end it just seems that CG is removing the chat over a few bad apples ,and who is going to end up losing are the members that had nothing to do with it.
This is really sad, it feels like the whole epoch going in the sunset. I consider myself chat-taught rather than self-taught. A lot of my knowledge started to evolve from hearing an unknown word in chat and elaborating on that. I know that the community will still be there for me, but it just wont feel the same. I was always keeping the CG page open just in case some interesting discussion will pop up, I wont have a reason for this anymore. I don’t want to be dramatic, but i really think this will hurt community in a major way.
Having a chat function on the site is always going to be more impactful than off-site chat via discord. Just introducing the friction of having to sign up or log in to discord will cause drop-off in adoption. The most active community members will go there but most others won’t. Chat on the site immediately lets newcomers know there is a community here that is active, and probably contributes fairly significantly to retention.
I’m sure you’ve got good reasons for wanting to do this, and you’ve already probably considered possible options. I understand you don’t want to maintain it. But, is there any way you could open source the chat functionality and have the community contribute to it with CG oversight? Could be win-win.
tRoLl vs 
Castles 
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