Hmm, I understand the addiction part about it. It seems like some people were using the shoutbox a little too much.
As for the spamming... to be honest, there shouldn't be anything wrong with it. There's a mute button to mute the sound, and people could just ignore what's being posted. It hasn't gotten out of hand yet anyways. The members who tend to use the shoutbox can more than control themselves if they need to.
As for detracting members from the boards, that's arguable. I've seen points where it's actually
encouraged some members to make some posts on the forums.
Now for moderation. I'm sure now that Darai's gone, it's been putting a lot of pressure on you to try and read what's been going on in the shoutbox... especially for the times when you were away from the forums.
So I'll propose two solutions. You can take it or leave it:
1. Create a separate membership group called "Shoutbox Moderators." These members are only able to issue warnings to other members and delete messages posted in the shoutbox if said messages are deemed to be inappropriate. From what I've seen, this should be enough to keep the shoutbox under control. As for figuring out who to choose to make members shoutbox mods, I'll leave that up to you
2. Have days where the shoutbox is on and some days where it is off. This should really be enough if you are worried about the chat detracting others from the forum boards, but, again, it's arguable since it's helped push and encourage others to make posts on the forums. This method should also relieve pressure from the administrators and moderators who are reading the shoutbox.
Well there you have it. You can have one, or none, or both. All I'm saying is that it's a bad idea to have the shoutbox gone entirely
