Twitch chat is a vital aspect of the Twitch experience as it enables streamers to interact with their followers in unique ways that go beyond plain entertainment. It provides a platform through which your viewers can actively engage with your content; they do this by chatting with one another and with you.
While Twitch chat is a great tool for communicating during streams, it has a lot of other benefits that can benefit your brand. To find out what they are, read on.
Importance of Checking Your Twitch Chat Logs
The primary function of Twitch chat logs is to communicate during streaming. However, there are many other benefits and they include the following:
Know Your Audience’s Reactions
While you’re playing a game, you will highly likely not be involved in the ongoing chat between your viewers. Hence, you won’t know how they are reacting to your play.
This is a big conundrum as one of the reasons why you are streaming the game in the first place is to know if your gameplay resonates with your audience.
Regardless of what you are trying to achieve in a game, you will agree that how your audience reacts to it is vital. The Twitch chat logs enable you to see the authentic reactions of your viewers to what you were doing; it is usually displayed in real-time. It is a reliable method of confirming if you are on the right track and are giving your audience what they want.
Check for Inappropriate Comments
Twitch as a platform shuns abusive behavior or comments of any form, and as such, cracks down on the act.
It is, however, up to you and mods to determine if the comments or behaviors exhibited by a particular viewer is inappropriate. To do this, you will have to visit the chat logs of your users and review their comments regularly. This is in a bid to confirm if they are in violation of any of the platform’s Terms of Service (TOS) and take appropriate punitive action.
If your viewers frequently violate the platform’s TOS and they leave inappropriate comments in the chat log, they will be putting your channel at risk of a crackdown by Twitch. As such, you should deal with insubordinate viewers flouting the platform’s rules as early as possible. You can choose between banning and suspending them, depending on the gravity of their offence.
Review Bans or Suspensions
If you ban or suspend a viewer who believes it was done in error and wants to appeal their punishment, there is also an option to review the chat logs.
This is incredibly beneficial; it will enable you to confirm whether that viewer committed the offense they were penalized for or not. As a result, you will be able to ensure that justice is served at all times. You will also be able to keep your moderators in check and ensure they are simply not abusing their powers.
Review Feedback
Several channels receive feedback and comments from their audience as regards how they can do things better. Furthermore, you can receive invitations from other streamers for joint collaborations.
Finally, the Twitch Chat Log enables you to go back to previous chats when you need to review comments, feedbacks, and other important information.
Collect Audience Data
Going through your Twitch chat log can help you discover the type of content your viewers enjoy. When you review their comments, you become privy to information about the games or activities they enjoy, sections of your stream they are not fond of, and their general opinion of your platform.
Knowing how your audience responds to your content will enable you to efficiently plan how to improve and evolve your channel.
Search Username
Anyone can create a Twitch account at no cost and in no time. While this has enabled the platform to grow, it has also been abused to escape bans and time-outs. For instance, a banned viewer can create a new account and use it to continuously abuse your chat.
With the Twitch Chat log, you can find out when an account was created and the type of comments the account makes. You can also search for banned accounts to compare its writing style and username with that of the new account. As a result, you will be able to determine if the person operating the new account was in charge of the banned one.
How Do You Check Your Twitch Chat Logs
Checking of Twitch chat logs used to be a difficult task in the past as it required manual recording, note-taking, or the use of third-party review services. Fortunately, there are now multiple easy-to-use methods you can use to review it. These methods are discussed below:
User Search Command
This is the fastest and easiest method you can employ to locate a comment made by a specific user. To use this method, enter the command: “/user [username]” in your channel’s chatbox. This will prompt Twitch to return data about a user, such as:
- The date the account was created.
- The number of comments and content the user has made on your channel.
- The number of time-outs and bans the user has in your chat, if any.
- The comments left by your mods about said user.
This method is especially useful if you suspect that a user has created a new account to escape the punishment he or she was given. You should know that this method does not show comments that has been removed by a moderator. However, you can use it to isolate the period a user was punished to enable you review their chat using the VOD method.
Review Your VODs
Another method you can employ to check your Twitch chat log is the in-app stream recording: VOD. With it, you can review the chat log for a full streaming session.
Also, you can use this method to view comments that were removed by a moderator. This makes it highly useful if you want to review a ban or suspension.
However, this method has its limitations, and they include the following:
- Only streamers that have gained Affiliate status can access recordings of up to two weeks prior. If you don’t have Affiliate status, you can only review streams you made within the past few days.
- Reviewing a chat will require that you go through an entire video. If you have an idea of when the comment was made, you will find it easier.
Use a Third-Party Program
If all you want is to remain abreast of your chat reviews, then Twitch tools are enough. However, if you want more control of chats that span a vast period of time, consider getting a Third-Party program.
Chatty
Chatty is an open-source software program that streamers used to review Twitch chat logs before Twitch developed an in-app search tool. Some still use it till today and it has numerous features that make it ideal for reviewing Twitch chat logs. Some of these features are:
- It allows you to download the chat transcript and enable auto-moderation support according to certain preset options.
- It retains emotes and badges that make comments easy to read.
Unfortunately, this software does not log your chats by default; it also deletes messages after some time. What’s more? If you or a mod remove a comment during a stream, you won’t be able to view it in Chatty.
Chatbots
Twitch chatbots, an example of which is Nightbot, are automated software that assists streamers with moderating and filtering chats. With them, you can incorporate unique features to your chat, thereby optimizing your viewer’s experience.
Also, several chatbots allow you to retain a complete and searchable log of every comment in your chat. However, you will have to configure them – the chatbots – for this to happen.
When you activate a bot in your chat, it will automatically gather data you can go through whenever you want. It is important to note that a chatbot cannot track or collect data if you don’t activate it in the chat. Therefore, you can’t use them to review old chats.
How to Check Twitch Chat Logs in Moderator View
Like streamers, moderators also have access to viewers’ chat logs. If you want to moderate, enter Moderator View by selecting the sword icon in the bottom-right section of the screen.
Thereafter, select a user’s name to view their chat history on the channel. Also, as a moderator, you will also have access to other information, such as other mod comments, and frequency of ban or time-outs, among others.
