Just wondering if people find the chat room helpful.  It's not a big deal to keep it going but I think a chat room could be used for some pretty cool things.  Help with a Zcar technical challenge, for instance.  Would it be a good idea to set up some kind of regular chat session so members can jump in and ask questions?  It might be kind of fun.

FYI, I added a block to the main page called "who's chatting" so you can look to see who's in there before you jump in.

 

How is chatting different from posting in a thread?  Chat Room content disappears, thread content is forever.  There doesn't seem to be any advantage to Chat.  What am I missing?

The chat room would be valuable for anyone who wants to have a discussion that doesn't need to be archived... I thought it would be good for a Q&A session about the website or an event..

I usually hang out in the chat room if I can't go to a cruise-in or just need to rest.  I've met a number of new people who ask about using the forum, or for some kind of advice.  With 24,000 members here, you'd think that there would be more people chatting about stuff.  IMO, most people that enter the chat room don't see a friend or someone they know from the forum, and finding no one, they leave.  That's their loss.

 On another forum wit a hat room, the chat room usually has about a dozen people talking.  Even the HybridZ chat room is active and all they talk about is turbos and Mega-Squirt!

Akl you need to do is to look for the little purple  number by the chat button on the button bar, and see how many users are there