Hopefully this will go through ^_^

Well, asking questions about Japan can get a bit tiresome after a while, since a good majority of the people here are interested in Japan in some way shape and form, but have never been and/or know nothing about the culture.

I got tons of questions too, but I also got time.

I was thinking shoutbox more to prevent thread derailment, more than to take the place of quick-random-topic-how-do-i-scrub-my-shower-drain kind of posts.

Well I'd approve it, but unfortunately us mods can't do anything like that as I'm sure your away. We'll have to pm Shinjuku if we want anything like that.

I have to say no to a Shout Box. Another forum I spend most of my internet time at has one; it gets spammed to the 100th degree by people who arn't members and the members who try and control it get pushed aside. This forum gets spammed enough, we don't need anything else that will add to it.

Sounds interesting... I'm in.

On another forum I'm on, the shoutbox is members only. It is possible to make it so that only members can use it, and it isn't visible to non-members.

exactly, and any abuse would be treated just like abuse in the forum, with warnings/bannings/ect.

I was wondering if that would be a possibility. Good to know that it is, cause I kinda like this idea.

honestly almost all of this forum has became a chat with the majority of posts in the general discussion area with very stimulating things such as "ruin the wish of the poster before you" and "would you rather be a vampire or a blahblahblah" or anything created by TheAlphaDuck. I have to agree with MMM on this aspect of the lack of Japan related postings.