Long ago on the now defunct E-Sangha, I discovered chatting. E-Sangha for those who don't remember it was a Buddhist forum that was home to many varieties of Buddhists. They started a chat room there and it took awhile but eventually it became home to some of us who preferred chatting to posting. When E-Sangha went down, and maybe even before, some people went on to Theravadan sites like Dhamma Wheel and there was also this Mahayana site. Friends from one site would sometime resurface on another site. Both Dharma Wheel and Dhamma Wheel had ajax chat rooms that people frequented sometimes. When the Dhamma Wheel site lost its chat room for awhile (which was one of the chat rooms most frequented by Buddhist chatters), I created a temporary Dhamma Wheel chat room on a free, Chatzy site. There were only a few of us as regulars. Eventually, they put in a new chat room on DW, but like here, it is not frequented and people don't seem to like the layout. I have contacted administrators on each site and they have said I could post about the Chatzy site here.
You are all welcome to come and chat. It is modeled after Lounge in that people can come to discuss anything and everything. Sometimes, it is the Dharma and other times it is science, politics, news, the weather, food, work, relationships.
Like other Buddhist chat rooms, we have a problem with coming in and no one being there. There are, however, some ways to deal with that. Under "My Preferences" you can set it so it alerts you when someone enters. So, you can have a second window open at the same time. It does after a certain time, consider you away and then it won't beep or flash when someone enters. Note: If you erase your browsing history you will have to reset it the next time you enter.
Another thing you can do is to invite someone to join you for a chat at a certain time by either email or pm on a site like this or just post when you might be in chat. The usual time for chatting for some of us is between 10 pm-midnight Eastern Daylight Time in the US, but if you can find others to chat with at different times that would be nice. I would love to see people in certain time zones set up a time to chat. For instance, if you live in the UK perhaps you might want to send messages to other Buddhists that you know in your country to join you for a chat. We are pretty much an informal, friendly group and some of us have known each other online for years. We still like newcomers though. So, please join us sometime. If no one is there, feel free to say something about yourself and when you might be back.
The address for the site is posted in my signature, but here it is: http://www.chatzy.com/25904628501622
sattva
