So, what happened? Did it just evolve into this? Or maybe the whole site has just degraded into a chat? Lol I'm guessing you mean some kind of "legit non-web2 chat" via java or special app or something?
Yeah, we've tried it on multiple occasions. The problem is that a chat room requires full-time, non-stop moderation. Conversations quickly get off topic despite the rules of the room and the number of complaints we received every day about this user or that user saying something out of bounds or causing a problem was just off the charts. It was a total pain in the ass to manage.
That's the essence of a "chat room" versus a "trade room". You deal with a lot of crap in a chat room because you're really there just to moderate (manage) the conversations between members whereas a trade room tends to have a single person telling others what to trade, when to buy and when to sell. The latter tends to be more professional or maybe more focused on minimizing the non-market noise. Simply, from what I can remember about ET chat room was that it was very similar to the forum conversations. In fact, I actually thought it was just a real-time "community lounge" thread that comes with a lot of non-market noise... Sometimes it was like a bar fight in which you punch anything that gets near you. In fact, it was in ET chat room where I saw a few members making arrangements to meet at a street corner in Chicago to settle an argument the old fashion Chicago style...apparently, it was because of a dispute about something that occurred in the community lounge threads. Someone actually showed up with his buddies waiting for the other person to show up. wrbtrader
Then the problem was not the content of the chat, but the rules of the room. They were too restrictive. You want to give a demonstration of free speech, then you make it no holds-barred, like the politics section. END OF LINE.