Chat rules-long version

Chat on KAOS is a great way to chat with others from the online learning world and help each other with math, coding or whatever subject, and in general, to learn together.

**Chat Guidelines**

We want to make chat a welcoming and
helpful place for new and returning visitors. In order to best provide an
environment that gives help and support to users who need it, please keep in
mind the following guidelines when using chat.

* **Be polite and welcoming to new users** - Everyone else on chat is a Wikia user just like you! Speak to them as you would want to be spoken to yourself. Real people use these sites, so treat them as you would someone in person. Don't insult users, or tell people to shut up - even when no bad words are used, gossip about users via PM and in general start drama, it isn't a nice thing to do. Don’t forget to be awesome to each other. #DFTBA
* **Cursing** - Cursing is allowed only if all users are ok with it, so generally not, but if some users get to know each other and discuss that it’s ok to curse together and you come in the room, you may not get upset about any cursing before you got there. Just remind them that now that you are there, there will not be any cursing. Moderators are to uphold this.
* **Be helpful** - Make sure to pay attention to other users, try to introduce topics to talk about. Also, the more full the chat room is (say over 5 people chatting not on away) the more important it is that there aren’t disruptive and distracting members in chat.
* **Be patient** - You may want to ask for help with something and people may not be in chat with the skills to help you, or they may just be relaxing. Also, unless you have become online friends with people, we discourage asking that person for help directly. Please ask the room and maturely accept it if no one volunteers to help.
* **Be a catalyst** - If nobody's talking, try bringing up something you want to discuss. What are you doing on Khan Academy, Scratch or other learning sites right now? Have an awesome day at school or work? These are all are good starting points for conversation.
* **Don't flood or disrupt the chat room** - Doing so makes it difficult for users to communicate and answer questions, as messages quickly disappear. This includes (but is not limited to) typing random letters, typing each word of a sentence on a different line, excessive use of the /me command, creating ASCII art, or lines in ALL CAPS. PLEASE DON'T SHOUT! (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ , excessive emoticons and just in general saying a lot of nothing. The busier the chat room is, the more important this becomes. Note that all the members in the chat showing each other different emoticons doesn’t qualify as spam since it’s not disruptive.
* **Don't try to replace the moderators** – If you feel someone is breaking the rules, please send a private message to the moderator and let them know. If you have done that and they are all on away/not responding to you, then you may say something. Exceptions, you may always ask users not to curse. Colloquially, this is referred to as "mini modding."
* **No asking for hacks and bots** - We take a stand against cheating, hacking and click botting. If you use these methods, keep it to yourself. We definitely do not want to hear that you annoyed someone repeatedly asking via private message for a bot. Furthermore, because we take cheating seriously, mentioning cheating on any site can and has resulted in demotion for the user. Any individual that has spoken out about being a cheater is ineligible for positions.

* **Don’t block private messages from the admin or moderator team** - If you are disruptive, we’d like to be able to send a private message to you about it instead of chastising you in front of the rest of the chat room or disrupting a busy chat to do so. PM blocking anyone from the admin or moderator team is an automatic 2 hour ban. If you have a problem with a moderator, it needs to be resolved immediately. Please contact an admin and leave chat until it can be resolved.

* **Cyberbullying is not tolerated** - if you are cyberbullying or attempting to cyberbully another regular to chat or admin team, you will be infinitely banned. An example of cyberbullying is recruiting people from around Khan Academy and Wikia and bringing them to our site to annoy or harass regular chatters. If you allow yourself to be recruited for the purposes of harassing one of our chatters, we reserve the right to bring the matter to Wikia staff. You will, of course, be banned from our site, as well. This may include an IP ban. Please be aware that this may prevent siblings or roommates from coming to our site.
* **Don’t Forget To Be Awesome** - We expect all of our chatters to represent us and the sites where they online learn in a positive light. We reserve the right to ban someone infinitely if they have a bad reputation on Wikia or an online site such as Khan Academy. We take a stand against cheating and disruptive behavior. Individuals who publically admit to cheating on Khan Academy, school tests or otherwise are ineligible for positions such as chat moderator and admin.

If a user bothers you, feel free to block their private messages. If *you* are blocked from PMing someone, it means they do not want to talk to you there. Please respect their wishes.
Admins and chatmods cannot monitor PMs, and we do not accept screenshots (because they can be faked). So while it's okay to report a PM problem, simply blocking PMs is best. If many people in the channel are having the same issue, then please report that to the chatmods.

Do NOT request to be made a chat moderator or otherwise in open chat. Requests must be written out and Emailed or wall messaged. You must  provide support to back your request, but hint, if you’re coming to us, then the answer is likely NO.

If you feel that a moderator or admin has been unfair, then you should bring this up with that moderator via PM and be sure to clearly explain why you feel that way. If that doesn't help, you
can contact an admin or bureaucrat. Please do not complain about one mod's decision to another. Remember, when a moderator asks you to stop doing something they don't mean for the next few minutes/hours/days, they mean to not do it again at all.