I mentioned this briefly in another thread, but the more I think about it, the more sense it makes. There are several reasons why this would help make tradeskills more viable.
Currently people wanting plasma converted, implants made, or any of the less common tradeskills are limited to shopping or /ooc where their requests are frequently drowned out by the other items for sale. The same holds true for people offering services - they must try to monitor those channels and sift through endlessly scrolling lines of text.
Also, since many components are simply random "junk" loot to the majority of players, they are rarely offered for sale, even though a craftsman may want them. If there was a specific channel for these items (instruction disks, weapon components), I'd venture to say the low-level versions may become more available.
As another benefit, since many items require multiple skills in order to be crafted, it would provide a forum for players to find 'teammates', so they could specialize in one trade and still create items by co-operating with another specialist.
AO has stated they intend to improve (or at least balance) tradeskills, this forum seems to indicate that, an in-game channel may be an simple early step toward that goal.
