The chat room was dumb, with little relevant participation, even when ET was loaded with posters, back in the day.
I think a chat would be a good idea. Someone would have to moderate and it should only be open to posters with some minimum post count. A lot of the veterans are still here.
Chats can be easy to set up. Some can do it for free, but to have control over who gets in a modest fee has to be paid. Perhaps someone should get off thar arse and make thar own chat, just phish for customers here. http://www.cbox.ws/products.php
It would be good if it was limited to just members of ET. You would need to be a member to both enter the room and post. This way, you could increase membership and also prevent bots from posting or viewing.
However, it would need to be faster. For example, in this post I need to click submit reply which is fine for a post. However, for chat I should be able to just type and press return to see something on the screen.
OK, I will give the unofficial answer from ET regarding a chatroom: The pain/profit ratio is so high (too much pain and very little profit potential) with an existing chatroom that it is just not worthy the headache. That's why it was closed down in the first place.... Did I make it clear, or should I explain it s l o w e r???? P.S.: To be a little bit more helpful, just make a chatroom on chatzy or on any similar site and put a link to it. If there is demand, people will show up.... Here, I have just made a virtual room, password is elitetrader: http://us10.chatzy.com/18285497863194