I am aware of that thread from almost 3 years ago, it's the first thing that comes up when you search for "live chat"...   I didn't want to mention it here.
What was the conclusion on that thread? Does it do any good to quote it here? No need to revive it.

Of course there are a number of limitations that can implemented into it (most likely they already exist) like:

• Number of active chats at one time
• Access to it based on a certain rank
• Limit of IMs that can be sent out on an hourly basis
• etc

Also, it does not necessarily need to be a general chat. It can be the same way as PMs: you can open a chat and talk to the user you want but now  you're using instant messaging.

Of course anything can be abused (even the current PM infrastructure), there's no perfect system but that doesn't mean we can't try, right?


Indeed, it can be moved anywhere if the mods think it is more relevant, but anything you post in Meta will be buried by the "merit talk" posts....

I'm not sure what's the status of epochtalk since it has been in development for a few years. I have added this new feature here in case it can be included in epochtalk as well, and as an intermediary phase we can make a small customization on this forum software as well.

I would appreciate it if you could be more positive in the posts you do, rather than taking a "naysayer" stand.   That's easy to do.