I was recently alerted to our increasing noise-to-signal ratio we have in chat, something I can definitely see looking back.
While discussing it in chat, people mentioned that they still enjoy the occasional off-topic chat, and even some of the ಠ_ಠ faces and other "pointless" chats. That said, I can definitely say that there are users that feel like there is too much of it.
Therefore, do you feel like there is too much off-topic chatter in our chat? If so, how do we go about changing it?
The Nineteenth Byte's purpose is labeled as general discussion; the jestful addendum appears to indicate that pretty much everything goes.
A good thing about this is that The Nineteenth Byte is usually crowded. If you need input on something, you can almost be sure that you'll find somebody you can talk to. It also means that there is a place where we can get to know each other better, which I think is useful for community building. None of this would be the case with a strict policy about what is on topic and what not.1
Moreover, I feel The Nineteenth Byte should also be the go-to place for serious discussions about PPCG.2 Idle chatter is not a problem, as long as it occurs during idle times. When a serious, important discussion is taking place, chatter should cease until that discussion is over.
Is it possible to have a calm, extended, one-to-one conversation with somebody about, say, golfing a particular answer? Probably not. I also don't think that falls under general discussion.
Ideally, we'd have topic rooms for these things. That has worked well for the development of esoteric programming languages, Data, the testing room for bots, etc. For whatever reason, the Code Golfer's Corner – which would seem like a popular idea on paper – didn't share that success.
Finally, there's always the option to create a temporary chat room for an extended conversation between a small number of users. That's a useful feature, and it should get used more often.
1 That does not mean I endorse caret chains, conversations that consist solely of animated GIFs, and similarly disruptive interactions that do not even qualify as off-topic chatter.
2 By that, I mean discussions that affect the site, like the recent discussion about the purpose of The Nineteenth Byte.
I find it hard to try to discuss golfing in chat. When I'm not pinging a specific person, my messages get lost in the flood of unrelated conversation. It's also hard to scan through the transcript for chat about golfing when it's full of meme clutter.
People can always make other chatrooms for a more focused discussion. - Helka Homba
"More focused discussion"? You have to be kidding me. You want me to go to a side room to discuss code golfing on a site about code golfing? We tried making a room for code golfing and it predictably died due to lack of activity. Nobody looks for some special new room, they look in the main site chat.
Having a main chat room for everything is okay, but it can get out of control, such as caret denotion turning into a train of noise that only annoying and distracts people.
The "solutions" of having a secondary chat room, room owners moving messages to the trash or even moderators deleting messages is both painful for users and often moderators to logistically co-ordinate who moves things and what gets moved.
Over in Code Review, we had a similar issue that arose when our userbase, chat userbase and subsequently noise increased. While the consensus was the creation of a secondary room, it's been a painful experience ever since. Room owners can get in arguments with normal chat users and it just creates tension and unhappiness.
People love the off-topic and random nature of the chat, it's a great way to talk to likeminded individuals about things you wouldn't otherwise bring up. People also love the idea that you can be talking about a certain topic and come back minutes later to an entirely different conversation.
Exercise Self Moderation. When you see this sort of thing:
aUser: ಠ_ಠ
secondUser: ^
thirdUser: ^^
Don't reply. Trains of ಠ_ಠ and ^ benefit nobody. If you agree with someone's post enough to post a caret'd reply, star the message ("Feel free to star any message you feel is particularly useful or worthy of summarizing in the transcript": from the FAQ)
While I'm not saying "abandon personality and fun", as rational people, you can make the choice whether or not to contribute to the noise.
Noise is an inevitable result of chatrooms, you simply have to deal with it the best you can as an individual.
As the person whose comment triggered Nathan's question, I think I should answer.
The FAQ for chat says:
This site is an extension of The Stack Exchange Network, so discussion should more or less revolve around the same topics you'd find at The Stack Exchange Network — but in an interactive, less strictly Q&A focused way. Do have fun, but please keep it professional and always be respectful of your fellow community members.
I understand this to mean that in the chat rooms associated with PPCG, especially in the primary chat room associated with PPCG, chat should be about programming puzzles, code golf, PPCG itself, and similar themes. For a long time I had the impression that at least 50% of the content was on-topic by that standard. But at some point it seemed to turn into a chan, where a handful of newish users posted memes and the on-topic content was 10% on a good day. That's why I abandoned it.
"General discussion" means general discussion. A few off topic tangents or unnecessary messages still fall into that category.
Unless there is outright spamming, nothing needs to be done.
People can always make other chatrooms for a more focused discussion.
In chat, as on main and meta, beyond a certain level of activity it becomes unfeasible for an individual to read through every post. We are approaching the point where activity on chat will be too much to read the transcript in full even with all off topic content excluded.
This doesn't mean we shouldn't try to improve things, but the solutions we find or make cannot be limited only to narrowing the topic of conversation. By all means encourage chatters to be reasonable and respect the chat community, but we're going to need something more in addition to that before long.
Stack Exchange already solves the major problem: It is not necessary for everyone (or anyone) to read every post on main, meta or chat. The community as a whole takes care of it. However, until recently it was in principle possible for an individual to read the entire chat transcript by catching up each day. As this becomes less practical, it can be frustrating for people who want to keep up to date.
Making an "off topic" chat room seems like a bad idea at present, since the activity level of The Nineteenth Byte is part of what makes it so useful for questions at short notice. However, as our community grows it may become more viable. Purely the on topic activity may become sufficient. It might be worth looking at what other sites with much bigger/more active chat communities do.
Some people are saying that memes are a part of chat culture, and so when rules or mods restrict them, they are suppressing site culture. I disagree.
Don't mistake volume for culture. A meme being repeated ad nauseum in chat does not make it part of the community. Rather, it's some of loud users who spam these memes over and over, long past the point that they were funny, if there ever was such a point. Chat discussions that cannot coexist in this environment are pushed out, along with whatever culture they carried. To borrow from Gresham's Law, bad culture drives out good.
