About Our Chat and Conference Room Culture
Our chat and conference rooms are unlike those you'll find most other places on the Internet, and behavior that is considered acceptable elsewhere will quickly mark you as an outsider here. The following guidelines will help you fit in faster.
Use Whole Sentences and Express Complete Thoughts
Members in our chat and conference rooms hold actual conversations -- our live rooms are some of the few on the Internet where people are expected to have something to talk about and to take the time to say it well. Typos and errors are as inescapable in these rooms as in any other live exchange, but our members don't use very much of the abbreviation-laden chat-speak you'll find elsewhere. We're writers and readers. Our objective is to make sure we express ourselves clearly.
The rooms support a 500-character text entry. The following is an example of 500 characters, including spaces:
This is test text. It exists only to fill space and demonstrate a function or feature. This is test text. It exists only to fill space and demonstrate a function or feature. This is test text. It exists only to fill space and demonstrate a function or feature. This is test text. It exists only to fill space and demonstrate a function or feature. This is test text. It exists only to fill space and demonstrate a function or feature. This is test text. It exists only to fill space and demonstrate a
You can see that this is a significant amount of text -- it allows members to share snippets of works they're writing, express complete thoughts, and more.
Snippets
When someone is snippeting from their work into chat, there are a few
things to remember:
1) If you want to snippet, please ask for permission first. You will most
likely get an unequivocal yes, but it's polite to ask nonetheless.
2) Once you've finished, indicate so with an extra line that says "end" or
something similar.
3) Please do not snippet more than a few lines of
text.
4) Please don't interrupt a snippet in progress. Wait for the "end" sign
to say something. (However, people do drop in during a snippet and
don't realize, and that's inescapable, but please don't welcome the person
until after the snippet.)
5) Please ask the poster if comments are welcome. Some people just want to
share what they enjoyed writing and don't want a critique and you would do
more damage than good just barging in with one.
Don't Hit on Members
A number of newcomers have assumed that because we have chat rooms, these are automatically places where they can go to look for girls (or guys). Here, however, one of the fastest ways to get chilled out of the conversation or dropped into everyone's Ignore list is to ask, "So, any cute girls in here?"
There may be cute girls in there. There probably are. But people are in chat to talk about reading and writing, their lives and current challenges, to hold word wars or work through a particularly tricky bit of plotting. People who enjoy the "So, any cute girls in here?" sort of chat rooms hate our rooms.
And a word of warning. If you persist in hitting on members, a moderator will remove you from the room. We define "persist" one post after a moderator has warned you to stop.
Know the Rules: TOS/AUP
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