The old Penpal-Gate Alles Mögliche

First off I want to say that I do like Penpal-Gate but I feel like it has changed a lot in the past.

I hope some remember when there was no way to chat privately unless you were in the public chat and sent private messages there. It was only allowed to send 3 private messages a day outside of the chat. This was both good and bad for people because on one hand if you wanted to talk to someone you had to be online at the same time but on the other hand you could chat actively and meet people in the chat thag were also online at that moment.

Nowadays there's no one in the public chat anymore so it's not even worth going there. I'm pretty sure that it used to sometimes have like 50 people.

This is just something I have noticed and it made this site feel more like a community and you'd recognize people who are very active.

I hope there can be a discussion about which version you personally preferred. Again, I think both versions have their disadvantages and that I wouldn't want to go back to how it was because having a private chat is pretty great. I don't mean this as critique but more to ask what others think.

Oh, I'm surprised to hear that!
I'm new to this site.
I really like penpal gate, and I must admit that even if the "chat" is deserted and useless, I prefer to talk in private, it's like this that we create links!

Thank you Elias for your feedback. I will address a couple of things:

Yes the chatroom has become a lot less popular than it used to be. I think it's because people tend to favor private messages a lot more (just like you said) and also because the rise of smartphones makes it a lot trickier to work a complete chatroom experience into a small screen (most users use their phone to browse the site).

That said, a redesign of the messaging system - including the chatroom - is in the works right now, in an attempt to make up for the current shortcomings.

Thanks for your reply Etienne.

My post wasn't intended as criticism. I only wanted to share the feeling the site used to have compared to now. I still think it's great.

Yes I completely understand 🙂

I miss the old penpal also.. The chat was full of people then. I made lot of friends there and now it is just empty..