Good point, I still see a ton of questions on SO like, "How do I add two numbers in teh PHP?", which seem to get both upvoted and replied to a lot because hey it's easy karma. Chat is the perfect place for this kind of stuff, because a) most new programmers I would hazard don't know about IRC, b) you can help clarify a poorly or sparsely worded question quickly in chat and c) it will hopefully decrease the dross on the front page.
And another nice thing is that if you're in chat and a question is just too big or too detailed (or you just don't want to deal with it) you can always just tell the person "go post this question."
I think this would reduce a lot of the drive-by chat noise.
