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Every site help center has the page for "View a full list of privileges you can earn".

Example screen-shot for Unix & Linux:

It says "Privileges control what you can do on <site> Stack Exchange". But I found that chat related privileges:

  1. talk in chat
  2. create chat rooms
  3. create gallery chat rooms

are not site specific - rather, they are server specific (i.e SE, MSE and SO).

So, We should add some information about chat server like following:

###Note about Chat Servers and associated privileges There are three chat servers on the Stack Exchange network:

  1. Stack Exchange Chat, the main & combined chat site for All Sites except following two:
  2. Stack Overflow Chat for the Stack Overflow
  3. Meta Chat for the Meta Stack Exchange

Chat related privileges are not site specific but server specific.

Privileges apply based on your total reputation on the associated site(s):

  • On Stack Overflow and Meta Stackexchange chat, privileges apply based on your reputation or moderator on the associated site.
  • On the combined Stack Exchange chat site, privileges apply based on your total reputation over all sites concerned (i.e. all but Stack Overflow and Meta Stack Exchange).

Read more about chat privileges and reputation.

I've just proposed and example information that can be added to help center at chat privileges like talk in chat, create chat rooms and create gallery chat rooms (or at least 1st privileges page)

Note:

  • Links form the Unix & Linux help center are used as example. Some information are provided from this post.
  • I originally tagged this question as but user recommend me to use
  • Welcome/comment to any suggestion/improvement.
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3
  • Agree it's messy, but can't really see any simple way to fix this, or clarify this in each site Help Center.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Dec 20, 2015 at 13:04
  • 1
    What is your discussion topic? Is this asking for an opinion on something? Or is it a bug report? Or are you asking for support?
    – Jason C
    Commented Dec 22, 2015 at 6:36
  • 1
    @JasonC from what I see, OP want to change the help center text to make things more clear.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Dec 22, 2015 at 8:41

1 Answer 1

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This is true, but - does it matter?

If you gain 20 rep on one site, you'll be able to talk in chat. Cool, that's nice.

There are now three possible scenarios:

  • you discover you can talk in other sites' chats as well, as long as they're on the server
  • you get 20 rep on another site to go to talk in their chat
  • you have the association bonus, and simply create an account if you want to talk

Those last two scenarios are unnecessary actions, but I feel that they're sufficiently easy that it's really not worth the effort to change the text there - unless there really is nothing else to do.

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2
  • That's true, but you can also chat if you have a total of 20 earned rep on all sites, so if you've received exactly one upvote (and no downvotes) on two sites, you'll be able to talk in chat.SE even though the page doesn't show you as having that privilege on any site. You may think that that's a tiny amount, but the same also applies to the other two privileges mentioned: if you have 500 rep on two sites, you can create gallery rooms even though no site's privileges page will show you as having that privilege.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Commented Apr 11, 2021 at 6:34
  • That said, it would be very difficult technically to fix this exactly as per the author's specification (query the chat site for chat rep, which may not work due to caching and potential inconsistencies). A better way would be to simply remove the chat-related privileges on all sites except the two with their own servers (SO and Meta.SE), as the pages on those two sites would correspond to actual privileges on their respective site-specific chats.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Commented Apr 11, 2021 at 6:36

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