How about including a chat room in CB separate from the usual forum? You could also include side rooms within it to enable pairs of users to have a private chat. The only ones I've used are in ICQ and I was thinking of something along those lines.
BUT rather than let it be open to everybody including trolls have users request permission from the Ed to access to it (just a one-off request so that it is available to a user thereafter); that way Ed could have a check to see whether the user is a bona fide contributor to AB before granting access to the feature. Think of it as a bonus for regular site visitors.
That would sort of defeat the main objective of the site. I think it's considered an treat that we have chatterbank considering it's supposed to be a Q&A site.
In the long run we'd like to have answers appear in pseudo-real time - so as you're typing yours you can see new answers appear (maybe every few seconds it would reload in-page with more answers.
That's why I said that it was like a treat to have CB, because it's not really a chat site.
Also, if you were planning on keeping the chat function private it would just start a petty 'who's saying what behind who's backs' sort of thing and if were to be for public viewing then it's not really any different from CB.
Plus, I want my mobile site before Ed makes anything else! ;)
It would be used mainly to b!tch about other users...no point. It's a chat site and if you want to contact someone individually then you can probably bung up a fake email account before it gets removed.
this is a Q&A site first and foremost...the net is brimming over with chat rooms - why try to add yet another by changing the primary function of this one?
CB was added under duress... it was a "necessary evil" in order to control the chatter taking over other topics... it was never what the site was about.