House rules in chat rooms - what?

Question

edit and tl;dr: this answer, along with the comment that chat rooms actually have owners, puts house rules in a historical context and also explains their workings and purpose a bit. Also my post may have deserved the downvotes since albeit my best attempts it seems to contain many points that can potentially ignite flame unnecessarily, for which I apologize.

As a side note, still I would find considerable for chat rooms (as they technically stand now) to be very clear and very explicit on their intended purpose in their topics, if they can.

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original question

In stackexchange chat, where I admit I rarely enter, although with the greater affection that time, so far I always visited rooms that were free to read and write.

Today I've tried Android, and was quite surprised that I have to request access; even more surprised to find out that there are house rules.

I could understand the requirements for write access. But I was actually shocked to see the very first of the actual rules:

Please do not ask a question unless you have first thoroughly researched it yourself.

I was previously under the impression that the chat rooms are exactly where casual chatting should take place, and I identified that with questions that are often exile to Stackexchange, like asking for resources, or asking for opinions.

Many of the usual Stackexchanges rules are a bit strict, albeit for good reasons to keep the site useful. This is where questions are closed or downvoted when the asker did her/his best but just couldn't get it through for the first time, or was voted off-topic.

Now I saw previously chat a place for these casual talks. But the android room's first rule can actually be seen even more strict than that of Stackexchange - therefore I don't understand, what's the point of keeping chat rooms at all? If I have to 'research' my 'questions' just like that, why should I not as it on Stackexchange main sites right away?! Is it a good idea even to ask it on chat, if even after research I could not find an answer for it?!

This is personal, but it also adds to my confusion that this kind of chat culture starts to remind me of an era/behavior what I call op-wars. Here is my tale: in the old days back in the 90s when I visited chat rooms more often, the operator rights were many times assigned to a few selected who tried to justify their use for it but I've always had the feeling that their personality just took over and they ended up sharing it among those who were most friendly to them. After that the rooms started to slowly turn into the personal playground of the power bearers and everything they didn't like ended up as some kind of ever-growing house rules. This usually was most strange when people were banned for things that were actually not on the house rules but the admins told them they are rules nevertheless.

I think the Stackexchange reputation-based culture is a better idea, and also that the main sites should be where people focus on asking the good questions, and chat should be more casual and secondary.

Stackexchange was always the site what encouraged asking questions. This is a QA site after all. Not every question is allowed, but there is a very specific faq with practical help to make you ask a question that can be answered, and there is a whole meta site for asking questions that help you improve your questions... A rule out in the blue like 'research it thoroughly' is very ambiguous and I don't see why these house rules are even a step forward.

Could you point me to any resources what helps me understand why are these kind of house-ruling on chat are there, how it works, or why is it a good idea even?

Answer 1

Not a duplicate, but this answers your question completely: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/110688.

Generally speaking, chat rooms are the "third place;" they are there for folks to blow off steam and relax a bit. That can't happen if users of Stack Overflow are merely trying to circumvent the rules we've imposed there by posting their questions in the chat room instead.

Chat rooms are not a catchall for all of the vague, ill-defined, underspecified questions from those Android developers who want to write the next Angry Birds without bothering to crack a Java book.

Answer 2

When you speak about "my confusion that this kind of chat culture starts to remind me of ... op-wars." I believe your confusion stems from a misunderstanding of the chat implementation.

Your main question addresses this confusion, "[help] me understand why are these kind of house-ruling on chat are there, [and] how it works, or why is it a good idea even?".

The rooms are supposed to be considered "on topic" to the exchange they are on. "House rules", as you call them, are usually referred to as a wiki for the chat room. These guidelines in the wiki are put in place by people who are vested in the room in one way or another.

Furthermore, the wikis serve as a way for users who are new to the room to be able to understand the context of the conversation. Often users who do not frequent chat will simply paste the link to their question which creates a one-box, and then leave, or spam the one-box. Worse, some users will enter chat because they think it is casual enough to troll or provoke. Part of the wiki's goal is also to maintain a safe for work environment in the chat rooms and to keep the conversation on topic to the site it is relevant to.

I disagree that "chat rooms are exactly where casual chatting should take place", because the conversation topic should still be related to the exchange for the most part. There are times where casual comments are made, but the majority of the conversations tend to attempt to be constructive. I do not believe that chat was implemented here to serve as some sort of social networking separated from the relative exchange.

When that specific wiki for android indicates that you should do some research before asking a question, it is because they have probably experienced a large amount of questions by various users about how to make a complete app, and where to find the exact code for their app. These types of attempts are known as being a help vampire, and as a result they tend to be explicitly called out in chat wikis. Each room will vary depending on the micro community involved.