I just don't have the same faith that you do that people, having already hashed out and discussed an idea in real-time chat, would then bother to go enter it into e.g. the forum or wiki. It's a relative minority that do that for the wiki already, and that's a tool to further distill the sometimes lengthy forum discussions that we would certainly like people to use more. Introducing a chat would seem to further invite fragmentation.
That being said yes, we could run an experiment. But how do we know nothing is being lost? And, having expressed this concern now, certainly people will be more conscious of it, at least initially. But in the long-term?
Nonetheless I will start looking into SMF chat systems to see what is available...
- Oshyan