Seems like there should be a chat room somewhere for this crew. Am I just missing it or ...?
Dude , you are in it .
no, I meant interactive chat
Mr.Admin would have to answer this one
There's an off topic section ..
What I meant was that this is a chatty forum .
Relaxed , friendly , and everyone is always ready to give input .
Threads here frequently go off-topic and no one cares too much .
It gives the forum a conversational tone .
Instant messaging?
Hi everyone, I think wiljen is referring to a realtime (live) chat room. I have thought about the idea several times. It's technically fairly easy to implement. The disadvantage is it means that helpful information can sometimes get lost, because it's just a realtime chat and not a conversation thread that is registered on the forum. One possible solution would be to log the chatroom and include it in the BLF search index. But still, I think it would be hard to find information. There would undoubtedly be a lot of off-topic chit-chat, which isn't bad in itself, but it could make useful flashlight tidbits more difficult to locate in the "static". A structured forum usually provides better information for the users, because everyone is sort of obliged to put a bit more effort into making their posts coherent and correctly categorized. I'm still not sure though. What do you all think?
You have just given all the reasons for keeping the forum as it is. Information in a chatroom get lost.
Some of us can type faster than we think....and I've seen boards erupt into chaos because of a bit of careless sentence structure (and that's been among native English speakers).
I agree with Mr. Admin regarding the potential loss of valuable information amongst lots of dross.
I agree. lol 
+1 Mr.Admin, my thoughts exactly.
Or if we go there to include chatroll or something like this, there needs to be a big disclaimer.
"Mainly for off-topic. When useful information is posted here, please also make a traditional post." or something like that.
What about a little test phase, to see the up- and downsides in action?
http://chatroll.com/embed/chat/blf-chatroom?id=4sdmAIpKZ_m&platform=html&w=$0
This chat room is limited to 10 logged-in people at a time. You can turn off the sound with the speaker symbol in the lower right and "pop out" the chat window with that arrow symbol. (seems to work better with smart phones) If you are not posting anything for a longer time, pls log out so others can join the fun. You can log in as a guest to use your BLF nick.
Leave BLF the way it is I say.......for now. :bigsmile:
Probably the best method if a chatroom is desired is to set up an IRC channel - it's what it is designed for. These don't need to be long lived. But best for way off topic stuff (Like most of my recent posts :P)
Just a quick note in here of channel and server should be adequate.
Just wondered. Some of the other forums I belong to run chat and it is a nice way to get to know other folks and the things that come up in chat on a regular basis quickly become stickies so that others can find them on the board. I agree that logging chat isnt a good method as it then produces volumes of off-topic stuff in the search index and pollutes it. Certainly not trying to push for one, just thought there might already be an IRC or some other link that I was un-aware of being a newb.
+1
Hi Vec,
Is this where you directed me?
I think a chatroom would be nice.
+ 1