The idea of a live chat has been discussed several times before. At one time there actually was a live chat. The chat was abandoned because:

1. While there are many users of 8052.com we are not all online at the same time. Most of the time when someone entered the chat room there was no-one eles there.

2. I was using an IRC Java applet that connected to a specific IRC server. The IRC server was not reliable and, thus, it was often impossible to connect to chat.

Given those two problems I just dumped the chat page. The idea has been raised several times since then but hasn't gone anywhere because #2 is still a factor and also for the other reasons cited by others already in this thread (not everyone has time to chat, not as many people can peer-correct any errors offered as solutions, and there is no permanent record of the chat as is the case with the forum which can be searched and provide answers years after the fact).

There are enough people visiting the 8052.com Forum that this is a pretty effective way to ask questions and get answers. I'm always impressed when someone asks a rather specific, obscure question and there's 2 or 3 responses in a matter of hours.

Craig Steiner
8052.com Webmaster