What is a chat room?
A chat room is an online forum where people can chat online (talk by broadcasting messages to people on the same forum in real time). Sometimes these venues are moderated either by limiting who is allowed to speak (not common), or by having moderation volunteers patrol the venue watching for disruptive or otherwise undesirable behaviour.
A chat room is a place on the Internet where people go to “chat” with other people in a room. Actually there are thousands of these Chat Rooms. The rooms are usually organized by topic. For example in a Michigan Room you would expect that most of the participants in the room are probably from Michigan or a Computer room where the participants are very interested in computers. When you’re in a Chat Room you can view all of the conversations taking place at once on your screen. You can also get into a private chat room where only you and one or two others may talk. This can be an inexpensive way to keep up with friends and relatives who are online. Chat rooms can also be described as a party line telephone call on the Internet. It is real-time discussions between people using keyboards.
A chat room typically takes the form of one or more ‘windows’ on the screen that contain line after line of text. One line is a response from a single person, their ‘Nic’ (Nickname) or ‘Handle’ is generally shown alongside. The people in the chat room enter a line of text and then press ENTER, where it is displayed for everyone to see. It then continues in a free-for-all chat session where one person may be having a dozen simultaneous ongoing ‘conversations’ with different people. It can get very confusing to follow as there are typically many people carrying on different conversations at any one time. Crowded chat rooms can appear completely random at first glance. Once you first jump into a chat room it can be quite a shock, and will take you some time to get used to what is going on and what is being said. It is best to just sit back for 5-10 minutes and watch the action to get a feel for the topics being discussed and the mood of the people. It is not unusual to see a lot of sweari
