ShoutBOX

No, I'm sorry, we won't be doing that. We will not have members posting various forms of off-topic content which is just as likely to include: nasty or insulting bashes aimed at each other, messages of a controversial political or religous nature, off color humor of various forms, and anything else that would take away from the level we try to set here on the forum.

A "ShoutBox" would still have to be moderated. You can't let any section on any website be unmoderated or it will get very nasty in a short time. Also, there's spamming, porn and every other type of bad content that an such a section would attract.

No, it's only a dream that you can focus all the negative and off-topic into one place and think that will keep everything perfect in the rest of the forum. Arguments that are allowed to be fought in one section will inevitably spill over as the fighting members carry it from the one place to everywhere else they see each other.

We used to have an off-topic (social section) before you joined the forum. It required a lot of moderation and had an overall negative effect on the forum. We removed that and decided to have just the security and software sections that are now in place.