Wow, if you guys could only read the archives of some of the old chats from that room....priceless. We had a cast of characters in there you just can't buy. As far as suggestions, yeah so here is the issue. Room attendance was very cyclical. If you spread the place too thin you will have 20 rooms with 2 people in it. I think there should be one room with the ability for the user to create a private chat where they can invite others in as well. This works well because the user still remains in the main room and can talk in there and they can speak in the smaller private room. Those private rooms I'm sure will be very cyclical as well. The general theory here is that crowds beget crowds. In other words, people will flock to the room that has the most people and rooms that are small will eventually become empty. Besides, the conversations where much more interesting with diverse people in them. A majority of the time the conversations were chit chat not market related and THAT is why people hung out in there, to get away. Nobody wants to talk about Al Brooks for 6 hours a day 252 days a year. Keep it simple.
Baron, ETA?? You have the best "real-time" trading site on internet, glad to see you offering a LIVE chat to complement this activity. Most other sites related to trading are like watching paint dry after you post. You have some real-time activity going on here; each poster can expect an almost instant reply. A live chat-room is a perfect complement to rest of site.
Put them on ignore! If there isn't an ignore function then don't bother trying to make this idea work.
I agree with Maverick, it should only be a couple of rooms. Don't spread the rooms out to thin. Index and Stock rooms are a given but their should be an additional few rooms. Just my two cents.
Whatever occurs in the forum will occur in the chat. At least in the forum you can put the trolls on ignore. I have a feeling you will not be able to do such in chat. Baron sets an ignore setup in chat...you're one heck of a coder and my hats off to you because a chat ignore feature will be greatly needed...it'll help prevent the fiasco that developed the last time Baron had a chat room.
We had an ignore feature in chat and some people used it and some claimed to use it. I would vote against it for the simple reason that one needs to make a grown up decision on whether they want to enter chat and if so, just be an adult and act like one. When too many people on ignore it's bad because people start talking over each other and repeating what other people are saying and it doesn't make for fluid conversation. Chat should be like a bar. You walk up, sit down and talk to the guy or girl next to you. You probably hear a lot of things in bars you don't want to and probably meet a lot of people you don't like. No one makes you go to the bar and no one will make you go to chat. Just build a thick skin and enjoy it. To be honest, chat can get very thin where the room is full and no one is really talking. The harder you make it for people to communicate, the more likely it will fail. Just my opinion.