One way is to change your initial bookmark that you use to pull the site up. Add something like this:
http://perlmonks.org/index.pl?node_id=XXXX&op=message&message=/chatter
+off&message_send=talk
Thank you for the effective advice. It would be nice to have a 'switch' in one's user settings though (say, a standard 'message' to send on logon, that for me would be '/chatteroff'): at first sight it doesn't seem to me like too radical a modification, but of course it's up to the Powers That Be, not me to say that...
