TWIDW Chat - Tonight (August 7, 2001) 9:30PM EDT
(posted 7th Aug 2001, 6:47pm - TWIDW post #0028)

As mentioned in the August 3 edition of This Week In Doctor Who, I'm going to have the first official chat in the TWIDW chatroom http://groups.yahoo.com/group/thisweekindoctorwho/chat . The chat room is open to all subscribers with a Yahoo! ID at any time, but a specific time can improve the odds of finding someone else when you get there. Anyone who is a subscriber to the group is invited to come and get to meet each other. I'd invite anyone who reads my column anywhere, but Yahoo restricts chatters to people subscribed to the specific group, so for now, it's just the 132 of us who can take part.

Time - 9:30PM Eastern Daylight Time (8:30PM Central Daylight Time, 7:30PM Mountain Daylight Time, 6:30PM Pacific Daylight Time)

9:30PM Eastern Daylight Time is 1:30AM Grenwich Mean Time, so chatters outside the US can figure out the chat time that way. The UK is on daylight savings time, so even though it will be 1:30AM Grenwich Time, it will be 2:30AM in London.

The chat is tentatively scheduled to last 45 minutes. Look for "thebfe" - that is MY yahoo id. As this is a Yahoo! Group, the chat room looks like the one that Shaun Lyon at Outpost Gallifrey http://www.gallifreyone.com/ recently set up. Those of us who are members of Shaun's group as well can attest that this time of room works very well for chatting purposes. Colors, emoticons, easy to read, an ignore feature if someone gets annoying - all the bells and whistles you want for an easy chat.

Since this is the first official chat, I'd like it to be largely an open forum. Questions about the TWIDW column, thoughts on an idea or two I have for the webpage http://groups.yahoo.com/group/thisweekindoctorwho/ , Doctor Who on TV, what times work best for chats, and any other clean topics that frequently turn up in chat rooms. As the owner of the group, I can restrict someone's membership to keep them out of the chatroom, so no abuse of people in the room, please. If you see bad behavior in the room when I'm not around, alert me and I will investigate.

Subsequent chats will be advertised in advance on the web site. I've been out of town and busy recently, or else this one would have been advertised there as well.

I'd like to think the chat room could be used by people who want to chat about the state of Doctor Who on TV and similar matters. As I said before, it's open all the time, so you can stop by anytime and see if someone shows up. Or if someone wants to use it to have their own chat with other subscribers, tell me the time and I'll note the time on the website so potential chatters can find out about it.

Hope to see some of you in a bit under 7 hours.

Benjamin F. Elliott editor, This Week In Doctor Who