Ed,

>I'm a PUTM; this means I'm stupid enough to pay for additional services that make accessing the repository of information easier. Of all the things implemented on the UT, the least productive one, and, as a paying customer, the one I'm least interested in underwriting the cost of configuring/managing/maintaining by my membership, is the Chat. It has produced several valuable resources, most specifically the study groups and Wednesday Night lecture series. Guess what? These two productive efforts did serve a useful function, and the results make the content of the wiki much more valuable.

Well said. I agree that the chat as-is (or as-was) has served a good community service for the Study Groups, the Lecture series, for emergency networking and idea exchange, and for occasional one-on-one conversations.

I also agree that Michel's time is better spent working on other enhancements to the UT, such as added features for PUTM's.

On balance, I have never been a chat host with administrative powers, so I don't know all the details of how that mechanism works, but to me, the chat seems to be pretty functional already.