I was pretty active in the later years of the IRC chat that Smeghead mentioned upthread, and the carryover to the board was pretty minimal during my tenure. It was never very active – we had maybe a few dozen people that were very active in it, and there were no mods – and the people who used it the most tended to be low-count posters so any drama tended to stay in chat or hashed out on non-SDMB sites like livejournal.
There are currently no plans to add chat to this site.
My post wasn’t meant to advocate it. I was just relating my own experience with #straightdope.
No harm, no foul, of course not. 
We could create some sort of fusion between Twitter and a chatroom, and call it Twat.
Who’s with me?
I’ll be in that.
Yup, I’m in favour of Twats!
Tread very carefully if you choose to include photo capabilities with your social networking fusion.
I don’t see what could possibly go wrong with photos of Twats (SFW)
Yeah mellophant chat is eh me and about three other people occasionally shooting the breeze. It used to have a lot more users but various schisms destroyed it more or less.