Well truth is, IRC was never in my plans. A few staff members asked for it. I said on one condition, "You run it!" and you can see what obviouly happened. It's not a medium I prefer to use personally, but if members want support for it, thats ok by me. So long as I see an interest.

I'm willing to make concssions for IRC if there is going to be a userbase for a #PGD channel, but not at the lengths that I am going to deface the site to do it.

PGD is a polished professional presence site and it will continue to be so for as long as I have a say in it's visual design and professional presence. That means if I cannot customize it and make it a part of PGD then it does not belong as a part of PGD.

Flash has already been considered and is a planed technology to the site. Java on the other hand is not, due to several cross-platform, slow performance and stability issues. Add to this the fact that I do not work in Java, and it does not fit our 'PGD mold'.

All things said, IRC is not a priority for PGD. However I'm going to take the FPK approach to this. If there is a member or staff member willing to run the IRC channel on freenode and/or someone willing to make an application and/or a Flash-based IRC app then I'd be willing to work with them to make IRC more intergrated with the site. But it would have to fit under specific criteria so that it meshes with the site in a professional way. The website takes priority.