Over the last few weeks, we've been looking at how to make Community Central an even more helpful place for the Fandom community. One of the areas we are looking to improve is Community Central Chat.
Right now, Chat is generally filled with conversation that has little if anything to do with Fandom or with supporting other users. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but we want Chat to be a place where users can find help and support and to talk about Fandom and their wikis.
To do that, we've worked with the Community Central admins and chat mods to update the Chat Guidelines. The key idea that these guidelines are based around is that Chat is a "place to talk about Fandom and to find help and support for your Fandom experience." That is the topic of the chat, and the admins and chat mods will be enforcing that moving forward.
A chat "about Fandom" includes conversations about people's' wikis and their fandoms. You can talk about Game of Thrones as much as you can talk about Game of Thrones Wiki, for example. If people are not sticking to the topic of Chat, it is likely that an admin or chat mod will warn them. The usual process for Chat Guideline violations will be followed from there.
Both staff and the admins/chat mod team are eager to see how Chat can grow and be better used as a support tool. As the topic of Chat begins to set in and conversation becomes more focused around Fandom, we'll be able to introduce more staff support and staff conversation into the chat as well. I for one am looking forward to really productive staff Office Hours moving forward, where we can talk about specific topics about Fandom. That's still a little ways down the road, but the structure that the admins and chat mods will be bringing to Chat will let us do that.
If you have any questions, feel free to let us know!