What if there was an official chatroom on IRC somewhere? I am fairly certain it was shut down in 2005-ish because of the site budget. That was before it was sold off. Buuuut, we don't need a server. A chat room somewhere on another established network would be equally good and free. I recommend Undernet or Freenode as those networks already have a large concentration of tech related channels.
The CGI:IRC script linked at the top of the page provided an easy way to hang out even without a proper IRC client. I bet it wouldn't be too hard to get something like that set up again... aaaaand, site admins could throw an ad on the bottom
Thoughts?
-sp0nge