Originally posted by Master_chris
Does the chat room, has to be owned and by the site, could this be somewhere like a third party location like MSN ' if it was still running'


The simple answer is no. Jinn could post a link to a fre chat site like MSN or Yahoo, but an on-site, easily accessible chat area would be easier and more efficient.

Besides, many of the off-site chats have their problems. MSN chat software tends to not work with any system running MSN or Windows (go figure) ever since Microsoft dumped Sun Microsystem's Java package from their OS. Plus, like Mobius said, it's not available overseas.

Yahoo chat is run by Yahoo, so I already don't like it. Also, Yahoo is doing their best to destroy all the adult content from their servers. Ask any group owners about that, they'll let you know. I have a feeling a big, popular BDSM chat area wouldn't last very long on their servers.

IRC is a good option, but it is hard to learn. The help files are like reading instructions on how to put together nuclear bombs. There are HTML and Java-based chat applets that plug into IRC, but are much less complicated.

In my personal opinion, a nice downloadable, free-standing Java or HTML applet would work the best for everyone on this site. At the very least, if someone had problems, they (or we) wouldn't have to go to MSN, Yahoo or IRC's tech support (or lack thereof) for help. We could contact the chat app admin and ask them what to do directly.