Communication

Experimenters have two chat options, "Free Chat and "Canned-Response". Chat may be turned on or off period-to-period. The default setting for Chat is off -- thus if an experimenter fails to include the "chatroom" column to a configuration file, no chat window will open (the chatroom default is FALSE).

Table - the screen capture below is of a configuration file that has chat turned on two periods. Period 4 has chat limited to canned responses. Period 5 has free form chat.

• chatroom - If chat is allowed (if chatroom=TRUE in the config file) then a separate chat window will open next to the main game client window. (See the Public Goods Game demo page for a visualization).
  • The default is chatroom=FALSE, meaning that if you leave out the chatroom column from your config file, no chat window will open.

• freeChat - Experimenters have two options for the chat window.
  • A free chat window (freeChat=TRUE), in which the chat window is a free-for-all, open text chatroom.
  • And a "Canned-Response" Chat window (freeChat=FALSE). This window is really only relevant to the Public Goods Game. See below for what this type of chat looks like.
  • Note - The default is freeChat=FALSE. Meaning if you have chatroom on and no column for freeChat, the chat window will be the Canned-Response style of chat. .

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Canned Chat

(figure below is an example of "canned chat" in a public goods game)

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Free Chat

(figure below is a fairly accurate example of free chat in a public goods game)

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