How to clean up "off topic conversation" within a chat room. The title for the chat room is specific to a purpose, and now I have a chat with an atheist sitting in the middle of the conversation. What would be the best way to get rid of that part of the conversation? Thank you.
2 Answers
Chat rooms are treated rather differently from posts on the main site. There is no particular requirement that conversations stay on-topic and there isn't any expectation that the transcript be cleaned up. Only common consensus in the room at the time determines what is being talked about.
That being said there are some ground rules and things you can do if they get broken:
If somebody is being disruptive, you can bring a moderator in. If you are in a topical room and somebody is butting in and nobody there wants to engage them, you can either ignore them or kindly ask that they head back to the general room (which is more of a free for all). If they don't stop, flag one of their posts for a chat moderator to address.
If a topic starts to get sidetracked and and you want to re-focus the room without loosing the other topic, you can switch rooms and continue the conversation in the general room. If you successfully split the topics and want to bing the transcript in line again a chat moderator can be flagged and they can migrate the remaining messages.
In most cases this sort of cleanup is not necessary as the rooms are expected to be free-flowing conversation. Please don't flag chat unless you really need action as there are several hundred moderators that get notified and paging them in to deal with things that don't actually need doing is a bit disruptive.
I wouldn't worry about it. You can simply ignore that person's contribution to the chat room and move on.
