[phyrrus9]

I would vote against both an IRC and a shout box. They decrease the post count making the forum look dead, and stops other people joining. For example, instead of someone creating a thread asking a question, they ask in the IRC/Shoutbox, it gets answered and you miss out on a thread with good information and then someone else looking for the exact same thing won't find a thread and probably won't ask in the IRC and just leave the forums.

My suggestion with IRC was to keep it restricted to what we currently use Skype for and discontinue the Skype groups. As far as questions go I wanted to see some interactive classes be done over IRC and have the logs be posted to the forums afterwards.