Here is the old room which was frozen due to inactivity. Here is the new room which noone is ever in?
Why is that?
This has been sort of asked before, but it was not completely fleshed out?
I believe that the chat system on this site could and will be very useful for people who want to review code.
Why is it not being utilized?
I can think of a few reasons:
Code Review is still in its early days.
People are concentrated on the main site, don't expect much from secondary aspects of the site. If one thing is worrying is that not many people seem to participate on Meta (as the site is still shaping). Chat, I don't care about.
Code Review overlaps (in expertise & interests) with very popular sites.
Mainly StackOverflow and Programmers. So most of the crowd here is active on one or both of these sites (and others), so people naturally lurk those sites' chat rooms.
Another thing is that several extended and off topic discussions that may arise from a Code Review would be perfect as questions on those sites. I did a review recently where the OP asked me for some clarifications on Dependency Inversion. I pointed him to Programmers, as a better place to ask. He read a couple of related questions there and problem solved, didn't even had to ask a new question. Why waste any time on chat, when most relevant discussions will be perfectly on topic on one of the other sites?
Code Review is somewhat discussion oriented.
Think about it. You post a piece of code, and people critique it. Why would that discussion benefit from chat? If you want a deeper analysis, just ask for it (either on comments or with a new question) and let people harvest the sweet rep.
Chat is evil.
There I said it. The StackOverflow rooms especially are full of noise. I'm all for mindless fun, but that is not why most of us are here.
Chat will kick off, naturally, when the site grows a bit older.
As a sidenote, as we are both PHP developers: The Stack Overflow PHP chat room is not a very welcoming place. If such behaviours migrate here from there, I'll do everything I can to fight them off. I can't do much, obviously, other than flag, flag, flag, and then some. And handle chat flags aggressively.
With the launch of the Stack Exchange tool-bar not-so-long-ago, there is now the chat link embedded in there.
Wherever you are, you can click the StackExchange on the left, and then click 'chat'.
The link to the chat does not seem to appear anywhere on the Code Review site.
To get to the chat, I have to:
Or I have to come across a question where somebody posts a link to the chat. Either of these methods are too much work for my tastes.
I've been to the chat multiple times and I did not notice until today there is a link to the chat on this meta site. The link to this chat only appears when you actually click on a question.
Ultimately, the only ways to access the chat are through obscure methods.
Why is it not being utilized?Because we are all in it for the rep, and chat provides none :P \$\endgroup\$