I think the 'lack of community' is because more time in STCC is spent racing because of the auto race restarts.
That's one of the reasons I wanted to introduce the new chat features and a new LFS IM client, and a server where you could 'hang' and chat without racing. The chat commands developed on the existing (and about to be out dated) system are extremely powerful tools, but their usage is currently too klunky and you cannot send messages from the W (V9) servers, only receive. Atm to send a message you have to be on the experimental server.
I know i've spoken aquite a lot about PM's and channels, and I think mostly their significance has washed over because atm they are not properly realised and their true value can't be demonstrated - but this is a significant step forward.
Imagine being able to chat to your friends on another server and arrange to meat up - when normally once you are in LFS that's it - your in and you are on the server that you are on and that's that.
Take the LRF channel concept, our LRF server suffers from 'momentum' in that there isn't really a large enough user base so people go on and lap by themselves and give up, having an 'LRF' channel allows people interested in racing the class to race other things until there are enough online to go and race them.
Imagine being able to have a team channel to talk to all your team mates no matter what server they are on.
Once these tools go live across the STCC servers I think we'll have unlocked a huge community potential.
If it where possible, i'd preffer STCC servers not to be the only place where private messages and channels worked. I'd like it built directly into LFS, and if the devs did that i'd happily put together a multi-platform IM client to work with it.
Before that happens though I need to sort out patch X compatibility of the SRA/STCC system and prove to you and the devs what a great community tool PM's and channels can be. Then Scawen might see the light and implement it and i'll deleta my own code in favour of the global LFS system