I'm a web developer who has been using IRC since 1993. It amazes me that in the year 2015 there is no better open source alternative for group & private instant messaging/chat than IRC.
I also would love a Flite Test IRC option. Its possible to use an IRC bot to log the chat and post the logs online which can be used to answer people's questions.
An IRC server does not require much resources and can easily be installed alongside a webserver such as the Fedora Linux server hosting this forum. I personally run a private IRC network with ~15 clients hosted from a tiny VPS I lease as my reverse Nginx proxy caching server.
One of the best tutorial sites on the web for Linux tools is HowToForge, and they've published instructions on how to set up a full featured IRC Chat server on Fedora Linux:
https://www.howtoforge.com/linux_irc_server_anope_services
For users to connect to IRC they'll need to use an IRC client such as mIRC (Windows), X-Chat (Windows, Linux), or LimeChat (OS X). Alternatively it is possible to install an IRC client on a webserver, my personal favorite for this is the open source
CGI:IRC (written in PERL).
If this is something that Flite Test is interested in (as I'm already one of two users that would like this), and your server administrator needs a hand with deploying this feature feel free to shoot me a message on here. I've got Skype and would be more than happy to lend a hand (for free) as an IRC community focused on RC fun would be absolutely amazing.