There have been spates of Skype activity periodically since wotmania went down and took it Chat with it, but it's like pulling teeth to get more than two or three people to try it at the same TIME. A few people come in for a couple days, see it's not this sprawling free for all with dozens of people, get bored and move on; a few weeks later a couple other people come in and do the same thing. It's like NASA sent out SETI probes, got bored when they didn't hear anything after a week, and everyone was off playing video games by the time ET phoned home.

Which is how I came to settle into just hanging out with the people who do visit regularly, or at least semi-regularly. It was never my goal to create a substitute for wotmania Chat, though Skype chats and conference calls generally my desire for that. In terms of architecture, I think it could fill that void for most people, but this conceit that there's some vast legion of unserviced chatters doesn't square with my observations, however limited my perspective. There are a couple dozen people who like some chat sometimes, depending on who's in there. That doesn't seem to really justify creating an entire new section of the site, when something's already filling that need without giving Ben any more to do (unless you count removing himself from a Skype convo when I create a new one and pull in every wotmaniac on my contact list. )

Just providing a place to have a Chat isn't going to bring back all the old wotmania Chat regulars though. If that's the problem, I suggest someone start sending emails, 'cos it ain't as easy as "if you build it he will come. " Trust me. Skype provides every electronic requirement. In fact, it has several things Chat lacked; boots stick and anyone who doesn't like it can just try and start another call/chat (of course, as was learned early on, that doesn't mean anyone will answer. ) People depend on who shows up at any given time, which is why I try to encourage as many people as possible to do so as often as possible. If all the things that made Chat desirable are absent though, giving them one more venue in which to be absent isn't going to make anything better, and doing it on RAFO WOULD make a lot more work for Ben.