Just got an idea that may save Minnit staff some work in the long term…
Why not give chat owner the job of generating e-mail password reset links for user who have forgotten theirs.
Also would be nice to be able to use the same e-mail addy when it becomes necessary for the user to create a new account… Tis a hassle to have to create a new e-mail each time…
Short answer; it’s not possible under the standard chat setup, but with Organizations, owners can change passwords / usernames / emails / whatever they want. They own the accounts and are in charge.
Now for the long answer… :)
Minnit initially started out as a site where users could find chatrooms to visit, or create a chat that others may want to go to. The idea was they would come to minnit.chat, sign up for an account, find a fun chat to join, and that was it. Adding the chatroom to websites was sort of an after-thought, something you could do to build engagement, but not something that was necessarily required. Chats were free to create and they lacked a lot of the customization features that they enjoy today. It was very obvious that it was a Minnit Chat, with no way to white-label it.
Effectively the chatroom version of Facebook “Groups,” Reddit “Subreddits,” and the like; you join the site, find a specific user-ran group that you enjoy, and chat on it. If you don’t like it, you return to the Minnit homepage and pick another chat.
However, owners who used our platform were always adding the to for their website instead, not caring about the listings. Folks who opted in to the listings did so on accident more often than not, and then would get upset — or leave the service entirely — when the inevitable spambots, strangers, or people speaking another language showed up. Owners also wanted more custom features, like white-label, custom CSS, SSO, more control over their users, and the like. Some of those were easy to add, so we did that and launched subscriptions about a year after our platform was out. Others, like SSO or owners managing the accounts, were effectively impossible under our setup — the entire site was set up so that you registered to minnit.chat and you could use that account to create chats or join chats. There was no way for our site to know for sure if a user who is present in Speedy55’s chat necessarily wants Speedy55 to control their account, just like there’s no way for a Facebook Group owner to help a Facebook user recover their account.
So we pivoted, released Organizations, and that’s where we’re at today. The old chats are still active, and will be for the indefinite future, but new users who sign up are guided to create an Organization only, so they maintain control of the entire system and the accounts. White-labeling, SSO, full ability to manage accounts, view IPs/emails, and more, all fall under the purview of the Organization owner, not Minnit Staff. Makes us no longer a “social media” platform and instead a “Software-as-a-Service” platform. We evolved to meet the needs of owners, rather than sticking by our initial idea, and I think everyone is happier for it.
Honestly if we could change every old chat into an Organization, that’d be ideal, because there are more features and more controls at their disposal… But there’s not a good way to do that without forcing users to re-register (which will be confusing with the chat mods etc). We considered it, but it wasn’t worth the risk of breaking people’s flows. So we’re keeping the old chat system active indefinitely. But we do encourage folks who want that level of control to consider making the transition to our Organizations platform — we’re happy to assist in transferring over the chat settings and setting up an automated redirect — if owners so desire. But that is up to them to make the call based on what makes sense for their chat and their community.
Thanks Jesse for taking the time… I now have a better understanding of where you’re coming from…