I am surprised that very few members use the chat room.
I think it is going to turn out that the chat room is not very useful. This might change, if special topic discussions were organized.
For example, if I want to say something to you (Brian) in the chat room, that would require that we both be connected to the chat room at the same time. Given that there is a time difference (Scotland vs Chicago area) that isn't too likely.
At present, I am connecting to the chat room in the evening (from home), and keeping a window open which I occasionally watch. But I do have other things to do, so I cannot be glued to the chat screen.
During daytime hours, I am normally at work. While I could connect to chat (to see if Brian is on line, for example), I really cannot stay connected. I have other things to do, and leaving myself connected would be misleading since I would not be watching most of the chat.
That's why I would find a personal messaging system more useful. I could direct a message to Brian (to use the same example), and it would stay in a message queue until he was online to read it. However, I acknowledge that setting up a messaging system is more difficult than setting up a chat facility.