A drawing room (chat)

[Boston Jones]

Sometimes I see a lode baring  of people on forums that is with inequality to the amount of posting done on the forums.  In other words, more people lurk than post.  Has a chat ever been entertained regarding a chatroom?  As often with these sites, a division usually occurs between the forum posters and the chat posters but I believe it would greatly add to the membership of the website it's self.

Simple suggestion/question.

[von Corax]

I'm fairly sure it's been proposed and rejected already. (I don't recall the justification for rejection, but I know it made sense at the time.) In the mean time, we do have an IRC channel; there's a thread about it in either Metaphysical or Off-Topic.

EDIT: Found it. It's the IRC? thread in Off Topic. (Thanks, DreamHazard.)

Note that, like the Wiki, the IRC channel (#brassgoggles) is outside the realm of the forum, so you need to register there independantly of your registration here.

[DreamHazard]

my ears were burning, and it turns out with good reason!

There is an IRC channel, which can be reached via the freenode network, irc.freenode.net, and as von Corax has stated, the channel is #brassgoggles.

If the thought of installing and configuring an IRC client seems somewhat daunting, then you can access via the web chat at http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=brassgoggles

There's no need for registration, you can just pop in at any time. I'm almost always about, and there are several lurkers who may be prodded into conversation, as well as regular users. If you join and no-one's talking, introduce yourself, and people will reply when they reach their respective keyboards. It isn't directly affiliated with the forum, but most of the channel's users are members here too.

Permanent lurkers are welcome

[Augustus Longeye]

I'm not sure I understand the original question, would it be possible for a bit of a rephrase?

The current rank system is built around the idea of "lurkers", as ranking is given for time online (and active) not based on posts... it's turned out to be quite good at showing that members have been here for a while, even if they've not posted all that much.

If you're after a chat-box type thing, there is the IRC, and several posts for various clubs over in Meta-clubs. I hope that helps!
~Longeye~

[S.Sprocket]

I believe the request is asking why don't we have a chat element on the forum.  A place for quick messages back and forth.  Tiny one-liners.

Von Corax is right, we did discuss and reject the idea some time ago.  At the time it was determined to be just another thing to moderate.  We had an IRC chat room as well but that faded with lack of interest. Also with IRC there was concerns of ownership.

In the end we decided we're a blog and a forum.  Speaking of, that blog part needs some lovin'.  If you'll excuse me...