Ok, let me try to explain something about how this chat thing COULD work. One way to view the chat is to look at it as an always on way of chatting with folks who are all around the world. In this scenario, users would just leave themselves logged in (assuming they are online) and participate when they can. You would make use of the "away" status menu to let people know whether you are really there or not. As new people log in, they get greeted, people shoot the breeze, etc. It's like having a virtual pub on your computer (without the booze, unfortunately).
Another way to view it is as an auditorium or meeting space. People can have hosted "events" where they pre-schedule a time, topic, etc. and try to get people to participate in some sort of discussion about an issue.
I'm happy with the EnviroChat being used for either of those scenarios. Obviously people use chats for other things, and some of those I'm not as thrilled about since there are so many other places to go online for that. I will say that at the "old" EnviroChat (back in the 90's) we actually had a surprisingly large number of marriages happen as a result of people meeting there. I'll out Granola on that one...
Bottom line... if you're here anyway, click the EnviroChat link at the top of every page and pull up a keyboard and have fun!
-josh