Here's one way to avoid being anonymous...

Meeting in person might not be practical since we are from all over the world.

And chat rooms seem to always get "off subject" almost immediately, and often degrade into trading of insults or else some "know it all" begins to demean the comments and ideas of others. Of course, we are all above that type of thing here at Inward Quest, but new people will sometimes agitate others in chat rooms just to amuse themselves. Most of the existing ones aren't very good.

And it is not impossible for us to communicate outside of Inward Quest. I have "met" a couple of people here who are now my friends on Facebook, and I do list my website if anyone wanted to visit and send me a message there. Many others here have their websites listed on their profiles as well, or blogs.

Just some food for thought...

Well actually the persons I would be most interested in on this site would be Barry and Simon..haha because Barry doesn't really express himself that much but he seems to be always online 24/7 keeping the site running well :) and well you can't really find much information about Simon at all anywhere

If you are talking about interacting personally with contributors on Inwardquest in real life, I think that would be what a lot more people want than being able to chat online with them. This is because most of the time when you want to chat with someone online, it's probably because you are genuinely interested in them, and being able to chat online with them won't neccessarily mean that you will know more about them. Maybe you would just have a easier way of getting answers and comments to your questions or thoughts, which would still be the same as posting them here and trying to get their attention to your questions with a link somehwere.

Being able to chat and reach to certain contributors faster does not equate to them having to become more 'known', but rather you just found a way to reach to them faster.

Here's a funny question I thought of while writing this and seeing this question..why don't you try to manifest this then, if it's really what you want? haha

I would vote for being able to chat with Stingray, Vesuvius, Michaela, Lee Ann, and so many other people here.. :) :) :).. Although I know it is better for them to be anonymous like it is now..

Not anonymous

Graham

We could have the InwardQuest conference 2010! haha!

I can't help but think being anonymous helps people express what they truly feel and believe.

in person there may be a layer of a social wall or whatever that is called.

Not sure there is that much of a difference in chat vs. this site.

I mean if we are all on it is nearly really time.

Maybe a video conference sometime to start??

We would need some sort of schedule with topics to follow or I would imagine it could get crazy with questions and answers!

Here is my idea: Since we are from all over the world how about Simon Templeton creating an addition site for live communication via Internet Camera. Of course, Inward-Quest would have to decide how to successfully implement something of this nature, since we the people are asking for a more informal community relationship.

Also I would like to make a point that every person has his/her own special spiritual gifts, therefore everyone is special, and is making a special worthwhile contribution to Inward-Quest. Personally, I would like to meet everyone if the LOA manifest this desire for me! I would like to meet the great teachers of this site, and the great students of this site. There is a saying: the student learns from the teacher, and in the same token, the teacher also learns from the student; they are both equally important people!

I have a middle-term idea:

Not a chatroom, as pointed out by I think therefore I am and LeeAnn make it impractical. But I participate in a couple of forums that have no chat, but you're able to send a Private Message to the participants, and add them as friends or contacts there, for easy communication between you and them. So if they want to reply or add you is their choice, and they can do it when they have the time or feel like.

I like it that way. It's private and at the same time still friendly.

BJ09

A google group is kind of like a forum? as an example http://groups.google.com/group/inward-quest-discussions . We could start a friends of inwardquest group there??

I just thought I should point out, in case you are not aware, that there is a discussions section attached to the Inward Quest Facebook page.

We originally intended it to be used for non-anonymous social discussions though I guess we didn't publicize it too well!

Any of you that wish to "chat" openly and more personally to each other are welcome to use it as a starting point.

Click here to go to the Inward Quest Facebook social discussions page

maybe we could volunteer to be part of a problem solving group,
that group needing specialized communications channels;
we would get to know group members more.