Just to be clear - I'm not necessarily against the idea, I'm just trying to think critically about things. My main problems with integrating a chat would be:
- Potentially splitting the chat communities across two locations, meaning that both are likely to die quicker. <- main problem
- Any chat-like plugin for the forum would be easy to implement, but a pain to use. It could be linked to your account on here, but would not be accessible via, e.g. IRC clients. Also no idea what kind of load capability/other requirements would be necessary.
- Hosting an IRC server from skullgirls.com would be a pain and require contacting Autumn to get permission, assistance and maintenance. It could still be integrated through this site reasonably easy, but would not be connected to user accounts.
- Using a public network/server for IRC is ???. Could work, but it's not something I'd be willing to put time into running/maintaining myself.
- I'd rather any feature that is added is able to be set up and then more or less forgotten about from a maintenance standpoint, and TBH I've no idea about IRC stuff so it could turn into a massive time sink.
