User blog comment:MisterWoodhouse/The future of Chat/@comment-25356303-20200805194820/@comment-26213507-20200809042002

I'm a little late to the party but I must concur. Discord and Slack are certainly excellent platforms, but they are, of course, not part of Wikia. Although our chat is no longer active, I do remember the days that it was, and the reason that it was so busy at the time was that it was convenient; no additional account was needed, and with a single click or link it could be joined. In addition, miscreants could be rightfully punished immediately; there was no need for double bans, and if users created alternate accounts to get around their chat bans then they were almost always found out immediately and shut down. The feature was certainly outdated, but its convenience cannot be denied, and if it was better on mobile then perhaps it would never have become inactive in the first place.

I do understand the reason for not implementing a new chat at the time, as it does rightfully take time and effort to create, and interest is inconsistent across the wikis. That being said, I do believe that it would be best to reconsider this stance in the future, as relying on third-party software like Discord and Slack is fine now, but it also shows a strange lack of interest to entice users to the site, and rather prefers them to go elsewhere to get the experience they want.