The Chat forum is useful as sometimes you want to discuss something that isn't directly related to astrology and the astrology sub-forums do not allow that. It also helps to build a sense of community since it allows members to get to know each other outside of the impersonal astrological discussions...
Hi,
Whilst I am per se not against the chat forum, I do want to mention the downside of it. Or rather, let me mention the positives of a serious Astrology-Only forum, which was the primary focus and objective of AW, too, at least when I was the moderator. Only people that were really interested in Astrology, either to (further) learn it and/or to help others with their knowledge, visited this forum. This is not to say that we did not have trolls back then, but they were quite limited. All that made it much, much easier to keep one's focus on Astrology, not get distracted (which even I do at times) by all the other completely unrelated fluff, and also to find specific information on astrological matters when one was looking for it. Another big advantage of an Astrology-Only forum is that, due to very curtailed unnecessary and sometimes really provocative distractions, arguments and again trolling were both quite limited, too.
You see, there are enough forums out there to talk about politics, drugs and rock-and-roll (to put it mildly) without any focus, whatsoever, on Astrology. The quality of AW has suffered quite a bit ever since the Chat Board took off on here.
Not only is there a plethora of forums for all the chat fluff out there, there is also a Chat Room on this AW forum itself. I certainly wish that the Admin of this forum would re-consider the provision of the Chat Board on AW.
As to admin or AW related questions, there is a Help With Forums' section. And, of course, it does reduce the moderators' work tremendously, too, and they too can then focus a bit more on Astrology themselves.
Needless to say, the above is my personal opinion.