Board Thread:General Wiki Discussion/@comment-24376429-20140317195106/@comment-3238001-20140317210813

ImGonnaBeThatGuy wrote: - This site isn't Facebook and it's not Skype. It's great people have friends here, but that's not what this site is for.

Chat is a never-ending series of problems. Mod drama, user drama, let's ban this word, WHY DID YOU BAN THAT WORD?, my friend got banned please unban them, there are no mods in chat at 3:45 EST make more mods, there are too many mods, penis penis penis, my internet cyber-fuckbuddy has been causing all sorts of trouble!, demote this mod, re-mote this mod, LET'S MAKE EVERYBODY A MOD, harassment, distraction, I'm Jeff the Killer!, I'm summoning a demon!, why would you say that about bronies?!, I met someone on chat and now one of us is causing problems for the other on another site and it all comes back here, and on and on and on.

The point of removing chat is so the focus can shift back to the site. I've pointed out before that chat rules have been modified numerous times, but the site rules are terribly out of date. It's not to get people who don't work on the site to work on the site. It's so that people who work on the site can work on the site without having to put a fire out on chat every week.

You've made friends here. Great. Talk to them on Skype, IRC, any one of the thousands of free chat clients on the internet, e-mail, Facebook, etc. I know, I know, it's not as EASY as it is on here. But the convenience you get comes at a cost.

There's still ways to ask questions and get feedback on the site. Without chat, maybe people will start paying attention to them. Talk pages, blogs, the forums (did you know there's a writer's workshop forum now?).

Will chat causes the site to lose members? Yes. It will. The question is do those members contribute? What is lost if we lose member who only come to chat? Like some people have already said, skype and facebook aren't as reliable as you think, not everyone wants to give out their cellphone numbers, and IRC as stated before is pretty complicated. There are a lot of people who actually contribute and chat, we shouldn't punish them for the few people that don't contribute.