Yeah, that’s pretty much the situation as I see it. When I say ‘we need channels’, I’m speaking from the organiser’s perspective, not the audience’s.
The current system’s distinction between audience applause (normal speech in the room itself, on the same level as presenters) and audience commentary (in a channel) makes sense in simulationist terms - it’s the stuff that would be visible if this was a TV broadcast! but not very much in usability terms. So if nothing else we could shift that convention.
Some people I know are building a chat app called euphoria.io, which most closely mimics the casual chat feel of IRC and such - with some improvements such as threaded conversation. It might be a good fit for the awards show. It’s still in early-ish development, but you can get a feel for it by looking at one of the existing rooms: music or space or xkcd or adventure. By the time the Xyzzies roll around, it should have matured quite a bit; I can put you in touch with the people building it - I had a chat with one of them about it and they seemed pretty confident about being able to help and actually pretty enthused about the awards themselves, so. At the very least, by the time the xyzzies roll around next year it’s likely you’ll have all the basic things you need: text-based chat with free access on the web, moderation tools, and channels (some of which can be private). While it’s not a self-hosted solution, it’s run by a couple of accessible people rather than a faceless corp, so that’s a plus too.
I think the problem cannot be solved easily, so you can ignore it. Just say “Awards are this way —>” and host an official webchat or something. And everyone who wants to have a conversation still have the ifMUD/IRC/Twitter for that. You can’t repeat a MUD experience in a web chat and you can’t do a moderated chat on MUD, so that’s a tough choice.
FYI, Zulip is now open source. It has streams and threads, @-notifications, private messaging, apps for web, mobile*, and desktop, and a lot of other stuff. I use it to keep up with my Recurse Center community and I find it straightforward and pleasant to use.
*full disclosure: I hear the mobile ones might kind of suck, but I’ve never used them myself
This might be completely ridiculous–but what if you simulcast the MUD ceremony on Twitch? That way you can have people still access the MUD in the old school way, but then other people who might not want to find a client or whatever could still follow the action, participate, etc.
I’ve set up XMPP room ifchat.oreolek.ru
It uses Candy with a substantial-sized plugin collection.
I think the ideal solution would be to do a plugin that prints out moderator messages in a BIGGER FONT. That way you can promote someone to be a moderator to emphasize his voice and demote him back when necessary.