We've written a new Chatiquette, and we want your feedback!

Question

Update: the new Chatiquette has been instated. We are still interested in hearing feedback, so feel free to continue to give feedback here.

As previously noted, the current Chatiquette for The Nineteenth Byte is ineffective. Hence, the room owners have been working on a revised Chatiquette to address the concerns of the community.

Our goal in making these revisions was not to add stricter rules. Rather, our goal was to have better boundaries for what behaviors are appropriate or inappropriate in chat. The community already had expectations for appropriate chat behavior that make chat a more pleasant place for everyone, and we wanted to clarify and make explicit those expectations.

The revised Chatiquette can be found at the end of this post. Please review it and post any feedback below. We want to hear what the community thinks, so the current Chatiquette will not be replaced until sufficient time has passed for us to receive feedback and make any changes as needed.

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Chatiquette

This is a set of guidelines for proper chat etiquette in The Nineteenth Byte. While following these suggestions is a great way to get along, it's not, nor will it ever be, a complete list; always use your own judgment and self-control. Remember, you're not the only one chatting in The Nineteenth Byte. Be considerate of other chatters.

Do's

Be Nice

• Be Nice means being patient and welcoming, especially to new users. It means not being rude, and being polite instead. And it means avoiding name-calling, bigotry, harassment and inappropriate language.
• The Nineteenth Byte may be a user’s first experience with PPCG, so be a good ambassador.

Be On-Topic

• While off-topic conversations are allowed in The Nineteenth Byte, they should not get in the way of on-topic discussions. The Nineteenth Byte's purpose is to provide a place for users to discuss PPCG.
• Please pause an off-topic conversation or continue it in a different room created for the conversation if there is an on-topic conversation going on. The room owners will be happy to assist the latter choice by moving the off-topic messages to the created room.

Don'ts

Don't Be Disruptive

• Being disruptive means doing anything that prevents, impedes, or discourages other users from using The Nineteenth Byte for its intended purpose. This includes continuing off-topic conversations while an on-topic conversation is happening, or posting nonsense that makes it harder to follow conversations.
• Additionally, engaging in vitriolic discussions or baiting others into engaging in them is similarly disruptive. We're all here to have a good time.
• Don't abuse oneboxes. Certain types of links will be inlined into chat. While posting interesting pictures/animations is OK in moderation, consider just posting it as a regular link instead. Links to images are preferred because 1) they take up less vertical space, allowing more of the conversation to be seen, and 2) some users have slow internet, limited bandwidth, or use mobile data for chatting. A link to an image is much less disruptive. The same applies to excessively large code-blocks.
• Don't promote your own content too much. Promoting your own content is absolutely OK, but there is definitely a point at which it becomes excessive. Avoid promoting off-site material unless it's related to the topic of discussion. Sharing posts that you want feedback on is perfectly fine, but sharing things just in the hope of getting more upvotes is not. The rule of thumb to follow is "If somebody else had posted this, would I still really want to share it?" If the answer is yes, then go ahead. More guidelines on self-promotion.

Don't Make Noise

• Sometimes, there isn't anybody talking in chat. That's perfectly fine. Don't send messages just because the room is quiet.
• Consider whether your message is actually adding anything to the chat room. If not, please keep it to yourself. If the message wouldn't be missed if it were gone, it probably doesn't add anything.
• Don't use The Nineteenth Byte as a dumping ground for your thoughts or actions. Consider whether a topic would be relevant to others before talking about it. We're here to have discussions, not to listen to someone's stream of consciousness.

Don't use chat flags for chatiquette violations

• Chat flags are only for urgent or offensive violations of network wide SE policy, and alert all 10K users and mods across all SE chat rooms. Instead mention it to a room owner. If it needs to be private raise a custom flag (in need of moderator intervention) on main (not chat) on one of your own posts.

Moderation

The room owners of The Nineteenth Byte have a duty to keep the chat room a nice place. In a perfect world, they would not need to use their moderation tools, because everyone would be respectful of each other, and use chat appropriately. However, situations do arise where moderation is necessary, and in those situations the room owners will take action.

Users who violate this chatiquette will be warned, and the violating messages will be removed. Additionally, room owners may kick the user from the room at their discretion. For violations of network-wide policy, which includes aggravating users in the room with repeated violations of this chatiquette, a network-wide suspension may be applied by a moderator.

If your messages are removed, or you are kicked or suspended, please reflect on the cause and make an effort to not violate the chatiquette in the future. If, after reflection, you believe a room owner action was inappropriate, please feel free to bring it up with the other room owners or on Meta for review.

Answer 1

status-completed

As a moderator on another site, I would really appreciate it if you could add something to your chatiquette about flagging. Since the TNB has its own set of rules and is very strict about remaining on topic, avoiding noise etc, when people in the room try to enforce this chatiquette, they end up using the only tool they have available: flags.

However, flags are shown to all moderators from all sites across the network and, depending on the flag type, to all >10k reputation users as well. This means that things that would be absolutely fine in any other room of the network end up getting flagged and then we get one or both of the following:

• irate mods/high rep users who don't understand why you'd be wasting their time with something that is clearly not flag-worthy.
• irate TNB users who just want to have their room nice and clean and follow the rules this community has defined and don't understand why these foreign types come in and complain about things they don't understand.

This is absolutely not the fault of the folks in TNB who are just trying to do their best. It is a problem with the system. However, I would suggest that you add something about not flagging things that aren't actually offensive. I remember coming into the TNB because someone had flagged a message which was simply:

u wot m8

Since flags are shown to all moderators, and most of us don't hang out in the TNB and have no way of knowing you all have your own set of rules, that flag looked like pure noise. I realize it wasn't, but I had no way of knowing that at the time.

So, I would respectfully suggest you add an entry to this new ruleset which explains that flags should only be used when something is really urgent and/or offensive. To deal with the other annoyances you (very understandably) want to get rid of, may I suggest you elect enough room owners to ensure someone with the ability to kick misbehaving users from the room is always present?

With enough local room owners who know your culture and rules, you will have a much easier time enforcing the chatiquette and you won't have to keep explaining your culture to all these ignorant network mods drawn by the flags. Win-win :)

Answer 2

Say what "Be Nice" means to us status-completed

Right now, the "Be nice" section starts with "Stack Exchange enforces the Be Nice policy network-wide. That means you must Be Nice in chat, too." and a link. This is a bit more standoffish ("enforces") and impersonal than it needs to be.

For instance: "Be nice means being patient and welcoming, especially to new users. It means not being rude, and being polite instead. And it means avoiding name-calling, bigotry, harassment and inappropriate language."

Then, we could follow this up with mentioning that it's a SE policy.

Answer 3

status-completed

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Having only just noticed:

For violations of network-wide policy or repeated violations of this chatiquette, a network-wide suspension may be applied by a moderator.

For violations of network-wide policy, yes. No problem with that. For repeated violations of chatiquette, you're standing on very unstable ground.

Moderators enforce network policy. Moderators do not enforce chatroom-specific, non-official rules using moderator-only functions like suspension. Kick people, sure, but suspending people for violating local, unofficial rules shouldn't be happening. Unless they also happen to violate network policy a bunch, of course, and in this case chatiquette and network policy are sufficiently aligned that in the majority of cases if someone continually violates chatiquette, they're likely to also have violated network policy.

This sentence should probably be reworded to

For violations of network-wide policy, a network-wide suspension may be applied by a moderator.

Network policy also includes listening to mods/ROs when they tell you to stop doing something, so chatiquette is still covered by this - but it avoids threatening suspensions for non-suspendable offences.

Answer 4

Why Host It Externally?

Should administrative content hosted on external sites ever be binding? Current top answer says no.

Why put the chatiquette on github rather than in a meta post all privileged PPCG users can maintain?

Who maintains the github chatiquette when the users with permissions for it are no longer interested in PPCG? What if a new mod would like to edit it but would prefer not to make a github account?

There are already several mods and TNB room owners who no longer frequent PPCG.

I'm not talking formality of informality. Make the rules as soft or hard as seems right. Just, what happens if all the mods and RO's suddenly succumb to Pythonitis? How does the community take over without being able to maintain established rules?