Group Chat that can works like a forum

I suggest that it be possible to put group chat into a mode that acts sort of like a forum, with the text that your enter into the main group chat working somewhat like creating a thread.

People that want to answer your question click on your words, or a button to the side of your words, or something like that, and they join a private sub-group IM session with you and everyone that joined in the private sub-group.

Thus you see only the requests for help - the thread headers - unless you choose to see the resulting discussion.

If you're happy with how Live Help used to work, then most of the code is already there. They'd just have to add an option to allow arbitrary groups to work like that.

If you weren't part of the group then the first IM would start a separate one-to-many 'conference' (every group member with the group active would see the 'conference' as a new IM and could participate or close the IM, only the people that talked would cause a "has left the session".

Most support/help groups wouldn't have near the volume Live Help did, so it really should work for that purpose .

"Selectively open" would be too difficult to implement for something that's "real-time" I'd think (for one the chat servers would have to keep every chat log readily available in case you open a question that someone else already answered, or to get the context of one that is currently being answered).

I think the chat in my scheme could still all be sent to all clients, just as it is now, just not displayed.


Lord, I wish I could correct the error in the thread title.