What does an Italicized username mean in a chat room, and how much can a room owner penalize somebody that doesn't like somebody else? [duplicate]

Question

I was in a room and one of the characters there whose name was in italics, didn't like the discussion another was engaged in.

The person whose name was in italics, then wrote some incorrect information (probably trolling saying something blatantly wrong)

(I'll include it here since he appeared here, introduced himself, and provided the transcript)

"THERE IS NO REFERENCES OR POINTERS IN JAVA GET OVER IT"
Vogel612 (the person whose name was in italics) (in the Java chat room)

And he tried to imply that any discussion of references in java was off topic, because java didn't have references. (a rather absurd claim).

The fact that he was wrong (references do exist in java) was pointed out to him, at which point he suggested that he had some power, as indicated by his name being in italics, and that he shouldn't be messed with, and he declared that the topic should not be discussed further.

I went to see who owns the room, but I saw no list. Though I see clicking on names of people whose names are in italics, lists that individual as an owner of the room.

So i'm curious.

Do these owners have the power to ban somebody from a room?

If so, then for how long?

Do they have the power to mute somebody?

Interestingly the person whose name was in italics, then started telling other people whose names were also in italics that the discussion was finished. Is it possible that one person whose name is in italics has more power than another. And is it possible to see what the ranking is?

vogel has brought up the chat transcript itself, link here https://chat.stackoverflow.com/transcript/message/25873281#25873281

Answer 1

Room owners have the following permissions:

1. Schedule events.
2. Pin a message.
3. Edit the room name, description and gallery status.
4. Put room in timeout.
5. Remove stars from messages.
6. Grant room ownership.
7. Grant explicit read or write access.
8. Create and remove feeds.
9. Move messages to a different room.
10. Kick-mute users.
11. Talk power during timeout.

So yes, room owners do have the power to kick-mute a user.

In the case of "room owner ranks", there are none. The only higher "rank" I can think of would be a moderator. Moderators have all the above permissions, in every room, and can also do the following:

1. View moderator flags.
2. Edit or delete any message at any time.
3. Mark flags as valid or invalid.
4. Ban users from chat.
5. Moderators cannot be kicked or suspended from chat.
6. Delete/undelete room, list deleted rooms.
7. Freeze/unfreeze room.

In Addition to that Moderators always have talk power. This means they can write messages into frozen rooms or timeouted rooms

Answer 2

So as "The person whose name was in italics" here's my side of the Story.

As a Room Owner with all these powers you gain, there also comes a certain amount of responsibility. These responsibilities include stepping in, when a discussion becomes unconstructive or is moving in circles.

So I read through the whole conversation. And you were told a lot of times that your question is not applicable (I actually lost count...). Yet you showed no signs of understanding or willingness to accept what people more knowledgeable than me told you.

Additionally there was a regular user for that Chatroom, who was significantly annoyed by your attitude, and as a result left the room. As room owner this is something I want to prevent, because it means the room got out of Hand.

As such I intervened.

Whether what I said was actually completely correct or not is out of discussion. The discussion got out of hand and you were the one that made it flare up time and time again. That's why I called you out.

When other room owners made closing remarks, I reminded them, that someone else (with italics username) had closed the discussion after my outburst, to prevent the discussion from flaring up again.

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Closing remark: I may have been in a bad mood at that time, but this doesn't excuse that I stooped down to your Level by plaing the rep game.

For future reference and third parties wishing to discuss this (I'm very interested in Feedback to improve my room ownership capabilities), the relevant discussion starts here