the main thing with chat was is its live, currentley its just a chat log basically, theres no interaction, you dont even know who is in the room, all you know is a certain person was in the room in the last 10 minutes you dont know who is still there or who just left! currently its completely pointless, ones of the huge elements was that there was a way to have a private chat, that is now gone.
what you have is a forum of the 1990's masquering as a chat/an admin log
someone has completely missed the point of what chat is supposed to be, its supposed to be like a meetng place and in that meeting place as in life people have private conversations, theres none of that functionality with this currently, either the live element or the private conversations!
there is actually no reason to use the chat now, functionally it does nothing the forum cant do but adds nothing for it to warrant going into and therefore even deserve its own space on the website