We’re testing a live chat for Friday’s game, come hang out!

Watch baseball with your friends, but in a slightly new way.

Hey there all you cool cats and kittens.

As you all know, a new San Francisco Giants season is underway, and it’s been fun seeing so many familiar faces talking about baseball. We had more than 400 comments in the Opening Day gamethread, and have had a few hundred for every game since, which officially makes Club McCovey Chronicles the hottest pandemic spot in the country.

So here’s the deal: we’re going to try something new on Friday, for the Giants home opener against the Colorado Rockies. We’re trying a live chat, instead of a gamethread.

Let me hit a few important details before I hit a few also important but not quite as important details.

1. This is a test. It’s not a new everyday feature I’m throwing at you with three days of notice. We’re going to try it out a few times over the course of the season, but for the most part it will be gamethreads as usual.
2. Because we want to get people using this for feedback purposes, there will not be a gamethread on Friday, so apologies if that’s what you’re looking for. There will be one on Tuesday.
3. You don’t need to sign up for anything, just be logged into your MCC account. There’s a chance you’ll have to confirm your email, but don’t worry: that’s just for login verification, not to spam your inbox with thrice weekly 10% off codes to products you’ve never heard of.
4. We want your feedback, so we can see if this is good, bad, decent, needs fixing, etc. There will be a survey that pops up and it would be great if you can fill it out. Or you can always email me or leave comments in another thread with any and all feedback.

OK, with those important details out of the way, I want to touch on a few smaller things about the experience, as I’ve been able to doodle around in it.

1. The live chat does not have an unread comment indicator, or keyboard shortcuts, but it has something else that I really like for the purposes of a game day convo. If you close the tab, or simply move to a new tab, when you return to the live chat it will take you back to where you left off and let you work from there.
2. Comment threading is different than in normal articles. You can still reply to a specific comment, but it will appear as the newest comment in the whole chat, in addition to being in the thread.
3. Because most communities are not as lovely as McCovey Chronicles, the live chat uses an AI system to try and auto-moderate abusive comments. The system is designed to keep you from saying offensive things, or abusive comments towards other posters but, ideally, still allows you to drop f-bombs at the opposing team or Joe West. However, as it’s still being developed, bear with it if it tries to keep you from saying something you want to say, and then reach for the thesaurus.
4. There are still some features that haven’t yet been added, so you won’t be able to, for instance, add images or gifs to your comments.
5. Comments load quickly and you can leave the tab and return to action with auto-loading comments.

OK folks, I think that’s it. The chat will go live about 10 minutes before the game, so come join us at 1:25 p.m. PT on Friday. And I’ll answer any questions that I can in the comments.

Thanks, all!