Definitive rules on chat rooms with non-technical discussion

Question

Related: flagging a chatroom which has no technical discussion (2) , flagging a chatroom which has no technical discussion

I've noticed that there are lots of chat rooms on chat where there isn't much technical discussion. By "isn't much" I mean:

• People advertising their own posts (not counted as technical discussion, IMO)
• ~2 technical questions a day, usually go unanswered.
• Some short technical discussion every few days

Here's what I do see in the rooms (mix and match):

• Small talk
• Random chat (What you normally see on FB/IRC/etc)
• Flirting. Yes, flirting.
• Exchanging emails
• Jokes

Aside from this, many users seem to visit SO just to chat, and nothing else.

Many of these rooms are in Romanized Hindi (or some other Indic language), which means that moderation of these rooms fails--thus I'm trying to clear these out first.

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Yes, we do allow OT discussions in chat. OT discussions help keep a room alive, and add to community bonding. But, these rooms seem to be just full of OT stuff. And, since many users are just here for the chat, I don't see how it promotes community bonding.

One issue is that there aren't any great guidelines for the suitability of a chat room for SO. Thus, whatever points I put forward to justify deletion are arguable. In case of a bare minimum of technical discussion, Jeff's criteria are arguable as well.

My rule of thumb is Is this room useful to SO in any way?, but that's another arguable point.

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Basically, I need something (preferably official) that dictates what is and is not allowed on chat, and why . This will be something useful to link to, and will hopefully prevent the inevitable "Why was my room frozen/deleted??" messages one sees. And it will prevent arguments, if the guidelines are sufficiently objective.

Answer 1

First of all, thanks a lot for your help in this. Really appreciated.

Now, while there's obiously no clear-cut answer to this, here are a few tell-tale signs I can see. You already identified much of this yourself, and I agree with your reasoning so far. All of these are merely hints that should be considered together with common sense, not as a yes-or-no checklist.

Signs of appropriate rooms

• The discussion generally (not necessarily exclusively) evolves around topics that are relevant to Stack Overflow. This doesn't mean it has to be about programming; it may also be about technology in general, about the programming community at large, or about Stack Overflow itself.

• The population of the room contains many active Stack Overflow users who use the chat as what it was designed to be – a Third Place –, not as their primary way of interacting with Stack Overflow.

• The room is welcoming to new users, but critical (in a helpful and guiding way, if possible) of dumping-my-problem-into-the-room drive-by chatters.

• There's a (not necessarily outspoken, more implicitly present) agreement among the inhabitants regarding the question "What is this room about?", and even when the conversation drifts off for a while, it tends to automatically return to somewhere around this topic.

• The real-world equivalent of the room would be a user group meeting.

Signs of inappropriate rooms

• The room's given topic (and thus its definition) already hints at the fact that people explicitly not want to talk about stuff that would be considered SO-related.

• The room is mainly used by people who just so managed to get 20 rep on SO in order to be able to chat, and then started chatting and hardly contribute to the site anymore.

• The room generates conversation in a tone that cannot by any stretch of imagination be considered "professional". This may e.g. be A/S/L types of conversation, bullying, back-and-forth accusations, etc.

  Although we generally tolerate conversations in non-English languages, I think the professionality bar should be higher in the non-English case, for the simple reason that community moderation is less likely to be helpful if only a fraction of the users even understand what's going on.

  Since Stack Overflow itself is English-only, we can expect chat users to be able to communicate in English as well; if they chat in other languages, they have to live with the fact that the benefit part of the doubt may be smaller.

• The room has lots of people talking at the same time, and usually past each other. There is no conversation going on (of course there may be several conversations at the same time; that's not where I'm going), instead, the room seems to drown in noise of unanswered questions, "hello @foo @bar @user @all" kind of messages, get-to-know-you chit-chat, etc. The room has a general feel of "no community here".

• The real-world equivalent of the room would be people waiting at a bus stop.