Board Thread:Support Requests - Getting Technical/@comment-5019798-20130321000817/@comment-3335785-20130321011858

Special:Chat is one of the more complex extensions Wikia have developed, and something I believe only works in the Oasis skin. As far as copyright concerns go, I don't think there are any issues with copying it. I seem to remember Wikia code is open source, the same as MediaWiki, but you may want to check with Special:Contact/general. Chat is also very temperamental, even for those who know what they're doing. It may still be in beta currently, although I'd need to check. Wikia extensions generally don't come with any set-up instructions (the Monaco skin was pulled from their repository for ShoutWiki, and set up from sheer hard work), so to find out what you;d need, Special:Contact is the way to go.

As far as alternatives, there is IRC, which is often used by Wikia's users to chat, usually on Freenode. However, some wikis are not bug fans of IRC, such as Brickipedia who are currently in the process of forking/relocating and use phpFreeChat which is probably far better suited to the average MediaWiki install.