I'm not necessarily arguing that we should keep the IM and chatbox. I just fail to see the sense of replacing them with the forums because the forums are essentially the same thing to me as IM/chatbox---another medium for people to hold convos (or gossip). However, you guys seem to moslty agree that IM and chatbox should go, and because of that, I think the owners should listen to you. Maybe we can try it for a provisional period and try to measure any increases in the stats @
Student brought up. The best case scenario for me would be an increase in battling /voting, but I doubt this will lead to that. Whatever. Let's give it a shot.