How To Become A Pro in the Chat Room ...
The Newbie's Guide To Etsy Chat (used by permission of Duet.etsy)
So you've heard about the chat rooms at etsy, but you're afraid of
making a fool of yourself? Say no more, Duet is here to save you. I've
put together a chat-cheat-sheet, one that will have you chatting like
an old pro in no time.
First, where do you find the chats? Go to the Etsy Forums and look at
the top right of the page. You'll see a link for chat, and the three
main chat rooms. See picture below. Click on "chat rooms." (You can
also click red, green, or blue, to be taken directly to that chat
room.)
After a brief loading period, in which you are being connected to the
chat server, you'll see a Lobby Page. This Lobby Page shows you all of
the chat rooms currently open, and the miniature avatars of the
chatters within. From here, you can join one of the rooms already
open, or you can create your own chat room. User made chat rooms can
have passwords, or they can be open to all--its your choice. A box is
provided below the room list to input a name for your chat room.
(People often hold Street Team Meetings, Etsy Guild Meetings, or hash
out the details of a transaction in passworded rooms.) There are 3
main chat rooms--Red, Blue, and Green. The colors have no
significance, they are simply names. See picture below.
By clicking on a certain room's Join button (far right side) you will
be brought to the chat room of your choice (assuming it isn't full
already,) after another quick loading page. For the purpose of ease,
I'll break down what you'll see into 3 main areas: Left Side, Right
Side, and Bottom. Please reference picture below.
Left Side
On the left, you'll see the various conversations people are having.
Line by line, these sentences scroll up and disappear. You can not
scroll them back down, so once it goes off the top of the page, its
gone for good. Each one begins with the name of the person who typed
it, so you can know who are you talking to. When you type and click
send, your message will also appear here.
Right Side
On the right side, you may see large thumbnail pictures of etsy items
start to appear. These are items from etsy sellers, either in the room
or not, that someone wanted to share with the rest of the room. See
something awesome while browsing etsy? Share it here. Want to show off
your latest listing? Share it here. Majority of the time, this
function is used by someone browsing the shop of another chatter, and
who wants to share something they found. A small version of the
poster's avatar is attached to the item's picture. You can click on
that tiny avatar to go to their shop, or you can click on the item
itself. Clicking on the item will expand it to give you the option of
seeing the full listing, in another window (click More to do this.)
Wait long enough, and someone will put one of your items here--its
polite to say thank you when this occurs.
So, how do you do this? Its as easy as can be. Find a nifty item in
someone's shop. Copy the item's url and paste the link into the
Listing I.D. box located at the bottom left side of your screen. Click
Add and it will pop up above that box. Voila! You've shared that item
with the entire room. **It is considered impolite to spam the room
with nothing but your own items, over and over. Doing this will create
a negative response from the rest of the chatters, someone may
politely ask you to join the conversation instead of spamming the
room, or you will simply be ignored.**
The Bottom
At the bottom of the screen, you can see the avatars of every person
in the chat room. In the picture above, you can see an expanded
section next to my name, Duet. This happens when you hover your mouse
over an avatar. Three options appear when you do this: shop, profile,
/msg. Click shop to visit that person's shop, click profile to see
their profile, and click /msg to send them a private message in chat.
"/msg Duet" appears in the chat box when someone clicks on mine, and
they can then type whatever private message they want to, to me.
This is also where you can set the color of your name in the chat.
Click on any color in the row of colors to choose from, below the text
box. Alternately, you can set your color manually by choosing a
hexadecimal color. To do that, type /color (color code here.) I set
mine manually, by typing "/color cc0033. You can find hexadecimal
codes here: http://www.december.com/html/spec/color.html If that's too
much hassle, just click a color from the color bar.
Scroll down on your screen to see a helpful list of commands provided
for you. This is your "in-chat" cheat sheet.
Other Nifty Chat Features
There are some really fun things you can do in chat. You can spin your
avatar, make it bounce up and down, set yourself to "away" for a few
moments, perform an action (the text you see in blue,) throw different
shapes across the screen, get rid of item pictures on the left side,
and grab someone's attention easily. Here's a list:
Performing an action: type /me (what you want to do here) Example:
typing" /me shows the room her new item" will produce this: Duet shows
the room her new item
Spin: type /spin (Your avatar will spin on it's own whenever you are
typing)
Bounce: type /lol
Away: type brb OR /brb OR /away (this will fade your avatar, letting
others know you have stepped away from chat briefly)
To set the title of the room (seen at the top of the page,) type
/title and whatever you want it to be.
To remove a picture on the left from YOUR sight, simply click and drag
it off screen--use a little throwing motion and it flies off the
screen!
To grab someone's attention, type out their full name. If they have
sound on, they will hear a "Bonk!" sound, alerting them to the chat
screen. You can also type the first few letters of the name, press the
Right arrow key on your keyboard, and it will fill in the rest for
you.
Tokens are fun. See below the chat box, where there's a tiny little
number and a shape of some sort next to it? The number tells you how
many tokens you have available, and will go up to 20. The longer you
are in chat, the more tokens you have, and they replenish after using
them. Tokens are used by clicking on the screen where you see all of
the conversations. Often one person doing this will set off another,
and another and another, until the whole screen has falling cookies or
glowing orbs floating across it.
You can change which token is selected for the room by typing /shape
(name of token you want here) like so: /shape cookies. Click on the
screen, and cookies will fall.
List of tokens: cookie, star, orb, coffee, notes, cross, haim. Yes,
Haim:)
And there you have it! The Newbie's Guide to Etsy Chat. All kinds of
things are discussed in chat, from how to make crafts to potty
training to forum discussions to recipes to banner making to, to,
to..... It can be calm, quiet chat, or it can be rowdy, adult chat--it
all depends on who has stopped by to have some fun. It takes time to
become comfortable with chat, as it often moves quickly and seems like
everyone knows everyone else already. Just jump in with a hello, add
your two cents to the topic at hand... a quiet chatter isn't a chatter
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