Brand New

Welcome to the newest feature on the AnswerBank - the Blog, a place where changes to the site, links to interesting discussions and questions, and other useful information will be regularly published.

With our initial post we would like to finally lie to rest the issue of the ChatterBank. We thank everyone who participated in the AnswerBank chat room experiment but you may have noticed that the link to the ChatterBank has been removed which means it will not be returning in any guise. We appreciate the sentiment behind the petition to bring it back but the chat room put a big strain on our moderation resources and it was felt that the type of content it provided detracted from the main purpose of the AnswerBank, that of being a Question and Answer site.

There are plenty of chat rooms on the web to patronise and we hope all former CBers have found a new place to get their quick chat fix, we just cannot supply the amount of moderation and technical support a chat room needs to function well and responsibly.

With the closure of the ChatterBank, AnswerBankers have wondered what the �rule� governing the amount of �chat� is allowed in the subject categories.

In short, a certain amount of "chat" is allowed in order for people to get their message across. Most questions cannot be answered with a simple "yes" or "no" and questions should be allowed to develop into a discussion, as when the always contentious subjects of the death penalty or the proper uses of grammar resurface. A good rule is, if it is not profane, abusive or incites people to violence and it manages to relate to the original question, let it be.

Slight deviations make the world go round.