We will need a server wide chat channel when housing is released

But what you're saying is that such a channel would be beneficial for everyone everywhere.
While that may be true, the argument in this thread is that housing will kill group gathering on the fleet.
It will not.
People will not be in their houses 24/7.
There are many places to be in the game right now that don't get to see fleet chat.
In fact, I would be willing to bet that at any given time of day, less than a third of a servers active population is on the fleet.
Other planets, personal ships, flashpoints, warzones?
Nope, none of those people can see fleet chat right now.
And that doesn't even include all the people who may be on the fleet with chat turned off.

The simple fact is that housing will have no significant impact on grouping as it exists right this second once the newness of "Oooo I have a house now. This is cool" wears off.
People that want groups will go to the fleet.
People that don't want groups still won't want groups post-housing.

Of course it won't kill it, but it will sure as hell hamper efforts to form groups. There's no reason for them to remove that many players from the potential pool...they need to enhance ways players communicate when looking for a group, not fracture it.

As I said earlier in the thread, they removed them from the pool when Makeb went live.
Same with Oricon.
And yet the world kept turning.

True. They've been splintering the community more and more over time (GSF does it too). I believe it's time to ensure that a player never has to be on Fleet again just to be a part of the LFG community.

And there's nothing wrong with wanting improved ways of getting players together for group activities.
They absolutely should do something about that.
I would love nothing more than to see less LFG spam in my chat.

My only problem with most of the arguments in this thread are the assertions that housing will destroy fleet gathering.
It won't have a significant long term impact, and certainly no more of an impact than 2+ years of additions of places that aren't the fleet have had.

Perhaps it won't, though really I don't see anyone asserting that, but it certainly presents a good time to add such a feature. They are essentially giving players a new area that will in many ways replace fleet for them, depending on what amenities they provide. This will serve to lessen those who would normally respond to a LFG message. Adding a dedicated and official LFG channel would alleviate this issue, and make grouping up even easier than it is now, instead of more difficult.

Adding a LFG chat will only bring fleet spam to everywhere. Because people will being spam EVERYTHING in it. Other games have tried special chat channels for trades and stuff like that and it failed; people just use general chat for everything. You give people a LFG chat and everyone will try to buy and sell, bash other players from a WZ or GSF they just lost or troll in it because it reach the biggest audience.

So if both of those are already spammed in general chat, what makes it worse in LFG chat? If you want to avoid it turn it off, or ignore all the annoying people, same as you do now.

Depends on how you implement it. For example, you could have a faction-wide LFM channel that did not allow posting any text you please, but instead gave you a checkbox/drop-down-menu driven interface (maybe reusing the UI for Group Finder) allowing you to specify:

• The Operation,
• The number of people,
• the difficulty mode,
• whether it is for full or weekly,
• how many tanks, heals, and DPS you still need, and
• (optional) which boss you are starting at

You click submit, and the system posts the appropriate text message to the channel. Perhaps a short comment (perhaps 20 characters, e.g.. "know fights," "post achievement," "for vehicle") would also be allowed.

The spam being faction-wide, instead of confined to a location.