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tl;dr --

  • Chat room owners can now establish guidelines for specific chat rooms
  • Guidelines will display in conjunction with the site Code of Conduct
  • This is also a great time to review and update Chat room descriptions
  • Chat room owners are being notified about this update this week, so rooms can be ready for the release of new Chat onboarding modals in mid-November (Nov 19)

As part of ongoing work to improve the Chat experience on Stack Exchange, it’s now possible to establish guidelines for specific chat rooms. In mid-November, the guidelines will start being shown to users who enter a Chat room.

Note: Diamond moderators are considered room owners for the platform they're a moderator for (Stack Overflow, Stack Exchange, Stack Exchange Meta) and therefore have access to all room owner functionality, even if they're not explicitly set as room owners. So, all mentions of "room owner" in this post also extends to diamond moderators.

How and when are the guidelines shown to chat users?

Reference the images below. Upon their first entry to the room, participants will see:

  • A modal with general chat onboarding information, and links to the Chat FAQ and network Code of Conduct. A user will need to check the box in order to proceed. This modal will be labeled according to whatever Stack Exchange site the chat room is parented to.
  • If room-specific guidelines are established, a second modal will appear detailing those. A user will need to acknowledge the individual guidelines before being able to proceed.
    • The room description is also shown at the top of this modal. The description is another place for room-specific onboarding content.
  • The modals will display upon a user’s first entry into the Chat room (after the onboarding modals are released). The guidelines can be accessed at any time from the Chat room’s info area. When accessed that way, only the specific room’s guidelines are displayed.

Chat room onboarding modal

The first onboarding modal, showing general information about Chat and linking to the Code of Conduct

Chat room description and guidelines

The second onboarding modal, showing the Chat room’s description and guidelines

Chat room guidelines link

The link to the Chat room’s guidelines, accessible at any time.

Where do room owners set up guidelines?

Updated Chat room creation and editing screens are now available. Guidelines can be established as part of the creation process and edited by room owners at any time. Rooms you own can be found by going to your chat profile. Reference the images below.

The new functionality allows for three titled guidelines, or perhaps three sections of guidelines, to optimize space within the modal. MiniMarkdown (like in Chat itself) is supported.

Updated chat room creation screen

The updated chat room creation screen, with guideline creation included

Updated chat room editing screen

The updated Chat room editing screen, with the same fields available

What should be in the guidelines?

Guidelines can be as simple as reinforcing general expectations around behavior and civil discourse. They might detail what topics are permitted, how to handle certain types of content, or even answer common questions.

Here are a couple of examples of guidelines that have been established in the past for specific rooms.

  • The PHP chat room on Stack Overflow has guidelines that use a Do’s and Don’ts format

  • The Physics h Bar guidelines (also featured in one of the example images)

The structure of the new guidelines display may require combining some guidelines into a single item.

Questions and feedback

We expect to release the updated Chat onboarding later this month, and there will be a new post when we do. We'll monitor feedback on this post through November 19, 2025.

  • What are guidelines that you think work well? Feel free to provide examples from other network rooms.
  • What are specific situations that might be helped by having guidelines available?
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    does the thing get a scrollbar if it doesn't otherwise fit on the user's screen-height? Commented Nov 5 at 20:50
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    how does the mobile chat interface link back to the guidelines? I don't think the mobile and desktop chats have full feature parity (I think mobile doesn't support message history for example?) but I assume mobile will be be able to check back on the guidelines any time as well? Commented Nov 5 at 23:17
  • Why aren't tags included on the room editing page? Commented Nov 6 at 16:17
  • @Catija apparently tags and host (parent site) are already included in the current room edit page, it's just not shown on the mockup. Commented Nov 7 at 6:20
  • I got a notification about this initiative 15 minutes ago, and see the announcement has been around since the 7th Nov. How come? Commented Nov 10 at 18:37
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    What's this? Can you now send global notifications to all inboxes? Btw this triggered the negative counter bug for me. Commented Nov 10 at 19:08
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    @Bergi No negative counter bug here, but clicking on the notification sends me to a simple unstyled text page saying "This room has been deleted." Commented Nov 11 at 10:14
  • Like Bergi, I have one fewer notification counted than I have unread notifications. I imagine if I read them all, it'll go negative. Commented Nov 12 at 2:04

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Anyone who finds themselves being kicked from a room should see these screens again once their suspension has expired or when they attempt to view the room after being kicked.

This is because by definition they’ve broken the CoC or the room specific guidelines and should therefore be reminded. Every single time they get kicked, they need to be reminded.

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    Probably with a little message/reminder at the top of the screen, saying something like "You were recently kicked from this room. Please review these guidelines and make sure you follow them in the future." (Someone better than me at words can probably come up with better phrasing.) Basically, something like the reminder shown in the Flag modal if a previous flag from you was recently declined. Commented Nov 5 at 20:29
  • I’d be happy with the screens above being shown again on the basis these users could use re-onboarding. Commented Nov 5 at 20:30
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    People tend to ignore and dismiss the notification bar at the top of the screen, so I don't believe that's an effective way of reminding them of the "be nice" policy. Commented Nov 6 at 8:25
  • If possible, it'd also be nice if a reminder of the room guidelines could be added to the screen users see when they try to rejoin a room while their kick-mute is still in effect. Just as an added extra, the guidelines should also definitely be shown again upon re-entering the room (because not everyone might try to re-join while still under the effects of a kick-mute). Commented Nov 6 at 14:54
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Is it possible to notify the room of guideline changes using an audit message?

Maybe a short message posted by the room owner/moderator who made the change or Stack Exchange.

Example:

This room's guidelines have been updated by (username). Please view the changes at [link].

or if the audit message is to be posted by the user who made the change:

This room's guidelines have been updated. Please view the changes at [link].

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    Speaking just for myself (I'm not working on this initiative), I agree that this could be useful. It might make sense for this to work similarly to how the Feeds user already notes changes to the room name or description, when the room is frozen/unfrozen or deleted/undeleted, or someone is added as a Room Owner. Commented Nov 5 at 22:46
  • My only concern with those feed messages is that they're extremely easy to miss. Commented Nov 6 at 3:51
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    Yeah, very confusing. I edited the guidelines in my room just for fun, and this is the message that showed up. Doesn't look like anything changed. No history. Commented Nov 6 at 5:47
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The modals will display upon a user’s first entry into the Chat room [...]

I see why this is useful, as you want people to know the rules (I wonder if you took inspiration from Discord?); however, will this impact ChatExchange?

Specifically, will this mean that for an account to post in a room via ChatExchange, the maintainer will need to sign in and manually go through that UI for each room the bot posts in?

If a bot only posts in one or two rooms, this isn't terrible, but for example, SmokeDetector posts in more than just a few rooms.

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  • Someone can probably test this on one of the two rooms by just deleting the HTML elements and checking to see if it just disabling chat on the front-end (or even less obtrusively blocking users) until the checkbox is checked, or if it is a server-side check for whether they have agreed to ToS. If it's a server-side check, then my guess is it will affect API-based access (the server will not allow users to submit chat messages unless ToS have been agreed to). If it is client-side, then API-based messaging would not be affected. Commented Nov 5 at 20:32
  • If under the modal the textarea still exists, opposed to a suspended user or logged out user's not, it will work. There could also be a feature added to CE in just a few lines of code to automatically accept them. Commented Nov 6 at 5:45
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I think this will be a valuable feature for rooms that have established expectations and guidelines and could be a cool thing to build into the mod election room creation tooling to replace the default chat messages CMs post in the room, which are quickly lost as conversation happens.

I also see it having value for warning users visiting some rooms for the first time where the content may need some context - whether that's because it may not be universally "safe" (but we continue to allow it) or the room is serving as a historical reference, as for post comments moved to chat.

That said, I have concerns about its inclusion as an option for all room types and whether there's enough oversight to ensure it's used appropriately. In particular, I'm not sure I understand why this would be part of the room creation process - and which room creation workflows would include this. This feels like something that could be a nuisance/abused but I'm curious whether y'all have any thoughts about these points.

  • Are users prompted to review these whenever they are created or updated?
    • You say that users will see it the first time they enter a room but what if they've been visiting the room for years already?
    • To ensure oversight and support continued knowledge/acceptance of a room's guidelines, will edits to the guidelines require all users to review and accept them again?
      • If so, should a "minor edit" option exist for changes with only a handful of characters difference?
      • If not, how do you plan to ensure oversight to prevent the text being overhauled without other ROs or regulars in the room being made aware of it?
  • Is this supported in rooms generally considered to be short-term or temporary, such as those created through the "start room with this user" or "continue comments in chat" process and other non-general use rooms? Why?
    • If so, will those processes also be revamped to add all of these fields to fill out?
  • Can this be a separate step from the room creation UI instead of being added to it?
    • I can't honestly imagine a user creating a brand new room and being faced with that huge UI with six new fields doubling the room creation overhead.
    • A newly-created room is unlikely to have guidelines to enumerate, making the mental load when creating a room even more weighty.
    • The current UI doesn't make it clear the fields are optional. Having fields presented as part of the room creation process seems like it'd be tempting people to put random crap in the fields... or, at best, just "none" six times over.

The thing is, most rooms don't need a feature like this but it seems that it's not only enabled by default for any RO who wants it, y'all are actively pushing people to use it even when it's highly unlikely they'll have any clue what to put in these fields.

Creating good UI guidance is really difficult and that's why there are limits in place for most "official" guidance limiting who creates it. Most requires staff to create or update with only a small amount granted to moderators, often with a two mod handshake required to enact the change.

But ROs in chat aren't "special" the way CMs and Mods are. It's not a role of trust - it's literally just whoever created the room or the system opting to award the role to the most active user in a room that didn't already have an RO. That doesn't indicate someone who should be trusted to create official-looking UI on this platform.

I own many rooms but I'm not sure that any of the ones I've created for personal use would benefit from this feature and I certainly don't like having so many extra fields making the room creation process seem more difficult. Can you please share your reasoning for these decisions and maybe reconsider some of them?

Also, many messages in chat are created by bots - so saying Chat is with real humans isn't even true.

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I'm not sure if this bug was already present before this change, but I noticed there's a grammatical problem / confusing phrase on the 'Edit chat room' page (emphasis mine):

Room description

This description will show on right rail of the chat room page and can be edited at any time. It will also be shown to users when they enter the chat room for the first time.

'on the right rail' would be grammatically correct, but I've never seen part of a webpage being referred to as a rail. I'd propose something like 'on the top right', though either option may be incorrect for mobile chat.

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    Good feedback. I used to work in advertising and I think that's where I picked up that jargon-y phrase. Copy can definitely be improved there - will think of some better ways to describe it! Commented Nov 5 at 20:13
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    @phoebe Terminology usually used here on Stack is typically "right menu" or just "right-hand side". The only section to the right of the actual chat message section that is ever referenced regularly is the place where starred messages appear, called the starboard. So anything that makes sense thematically and is intuitive would probably work, phrasing-wise. Commented Nov 5 at 20:33
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    I want to say the common term used would be the sidebar - left or right. Commented Nov 6 at 3:45
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Please don't send notices to users to set room guidelines for chatrooms between two users (e.g. "continue this discussion in chat"), or at the very least, don't send notices for rooms that are frozen. I just got a notification to set guidelines on a chatroom that has been frozen for roughly ten years...

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    I guess that answers my concerns about which rooms this is enabled for. Ugh. This is a mess. Commented Nov 10 at 19:47
  • I just got a notification "Set your room's culture", but when I click on it, I get "This room has been deleted." (the link is chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/148199/edit) Commented Nov 11 at 12:24
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I received a notification about this feature, and wondered what room is "mine"

Chat room is deleted

Only to find out that it's been deleted.

If this is not a bug, I think owners of deleted room should not be notified about their non-existent room.

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    Addressed elsewhere: We should have excluded deleted rooms from this notification. Sorry! This is a one-time notification, so it won't show up again. Commented Nov 11 at 2:54
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If things go well - we'll hopefully have folks who've been away from chat explore chat once more and they might need a refresher. It would be useful to show these guidelines to people who've been away for say a year.

Also, what would be the experience for users without less than 20 reputation, in a non lobby room?

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  • In a non-lobby room, the guidelines would still show as normal, otherwise there is no use to them. Commented Nov 6 at 5:50
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A user will need to check the box in order to proceed.

I don't see how this is helpful.

The second onboarding modal, showing the Chat room’s description and guidelines

This is the useful page. I believe it should be shown first.

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I know that the go-live date is only 2 weeks away (Nov 19), but is there a way for us to see what the "Room Guidelines" page will look like before that date, with actual content for my own room, rather than a mockup?

For example, I have added 3 guidelines to this room but there is no way to see a preview of the "Room Guidelines" page, as not even the link to that page is visible.

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    Didn't they already show us the link? i.sstatic.net/KniThzpG.png Commented Nov 5 at 21:36
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    @Otakuwu If you go to that UX chat room info page, the Guidelines link is nowhere to be seen. So the image is just a mockup. But my question is about seeing a preview of guidelines for my own room, not what the link looks like. Commented Nov 5 at 23:02
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After setting up the guidelines for a lobby like (1-rep) room, only the generic lobby pop-up is shown and the 2nd page with the room specific guidelines is missing (tested on Challenge Accepted room on SO).

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    It's not live yet, though - they only have the fields available to fill out. - "release of new Chat onboarding modals in mid-November (Nov 19)." Commented Nov 7 at 16:12
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    @Catija good point :D although I kinda wanna keep this on dev's radar, so they don't treat every lobby room like the Lobbies. If you think this should be deleted and then reposted (if it wasn't resolved) on launch, I will do so. Let me know. Commented Nov 7 at 17:28
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Very disappointed to be notified about something I never showed interest in. I also received an email about this "event". I can't agree more with this comment.

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Appeared to have been a ?

I got the announcement message in my inbox:

Set your rooms’ culture! Owners can now add guidelines to manage expectations for new users. Learn more.

The message is clickable & the "Learn more" leads me to expect that it would link to someplace with info. Previously, it instead linked back to my inbox: https://stackexchange.com/users/918168/pikalek?tab=inbox

I wondered why it didn't link it to this announcement post instead - it now does so.

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    I do have 2 notifications, one pointing to (the room edit page for) a deleted room and one pointing to this announcement post. So I think the devs may have potentially done something to address this? In any case, neither notification pointed to the global inbox for me. Commented Nov 14 at 0:43
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    @V2Blast Yes, mine also redirects here now - I doubt I would have noticed the fix, thanks for pointing that out! Commented 2 days ago
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Will chat formatting work in either the guideline description or title? Links, italics, strikeout, etc? Will some formatting work and some won't (in which case, which is which?)?

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    If I correctly understand what you're asking, note it states in the question text, regarding this new guidelines feature, that "The new functionality allows for three titled guidelines, or perhaps three sections of guidelines, to optimize space within the modal. MiniMarkdown (like in Chat itself) is supported." As such, for now at least, it appears this will accept the same markdown formatting as whatever is available in Chat. Commented Nov 6 at 2:43
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Please, define exactly what "Upon their first entry to the room" means, as I doubt you are now tracking the list of users who ever entered any room since the beginning of time. Is this defined by being pingable, being in the "Frequently in room" list or it is really a new information you are going to store? What action exactly constitutes "entering" (just entering, posting a message etc) and more importantly how does the platform remember that I previously entered?

Tangentially how does this integrate with rooms in GALLERY mode? Does the user still get the prompt even if they can't speak in the room? Does the system check for "write" permission? This is relevant to decide if the "room notices" for gallery rooms should focus on how to request access, the actual room rules or both.

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    I'd imagine it'd be valuable for gallery mode since it could indicate why the room is in that state and explain how to request access (if that's possible). Commented Nov 6 at 13:52
  • @Catija that is assuming that "entering" means "enter" opposed to "enter and post", that's why the clarification is important imho. Commented Nov 6 at 14:53
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    I don't understand why attempting to post would be the cause of the trigger. That makes no sense to me. It's valid to ask but I'm pretty sure that entering the room is all that's needed. Commented Nov 6 at 16:04
  • @Catija Posting creates an entry in the database; just entering doesn't necessarily. Commented Nov 10 at 22:54
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    @wizzwizz4 sure, but the test is whether you have accepted the policy or not. You don’t need to capture entering the room in the database to determine whether to display the policy, you just need to check whether the policy has been accepted. And accepting the policy creates a database entry. Commented Nov 11 at 14:10
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Please expand the character limit for the new onboarding textboxes to something like 10,000 or in that realm. 1,000 is way too short for some rooms. Or, if you can't increase it to something more useful, let us disable this 'feature' in part or in whole, per-room.

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    1000 characters is already long enough that many people will skim it without reading fully. At 10000, the only people who would read that are the people who wouldn't be causing problems in the first place. Commented Nov 5 at 20:48
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    Rooms with complex rules should be able to link to those rules and include an abridged version in the modal. This request is actually an example of why I question the creation of this feature for all rooms. Commented Nov 5 at 20:57
  • @TheGuywithTheHat Hosting websites costs real money and if we can migrate content from an external website to Stack's domain that's a real impact for us, and it's better to show exhaustive rules natively in the chat domain rather than trying to send users off to some other site to read rules for a chatroom on Stack Overflow. If users don't read rules that's on them; it's not my concern. Commented Nov 5 at 21:03
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    @TylerH The rules wouldn't need to be on an external site though. You could make a Bookmark for it and link to that, create a separate chatroom just for the rules, etc. No need to host your own site for this. Commented Nov 5 at 21:14
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    You could also host the rules on the site's meta since rooms are generally tied to a specific site... or keep them in a Page on GH for projects that might be there - which doesn't charge for public Pages as far as I'm aware? Commented Nov 5 at 21:37
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    @TylerH if 5% of people don't read the rules, that's a problem with those people. If 95% of people don't read the rules, that's a problem with the rules. Commented Nov 5 at 22:44
  • @TheGuywithTheHat Sort of, but not really... but again that's not my problem. If this feature wants to be useful, at least for the rooms I'm an RO of, it needs to have a higher character count than 1,000. A half measure which is what its current state is is arguably worse if I'm forced to use it. If it can't be increased then we should be given the option to disable it completely. Commented Nov 6 at 16:07
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    Seems like it's "disabled" by simply not filling in the fields? Or is content required? The instructions say you may set "up to three", so zero would be less than three. That said, one of the points in my answer is that it's not obvious that it's optional. Commented Nov 6 at 16:11
  • @Catija I thought you still have to click the checkbox of 'agreeing to ToS' regardless of whether you filled something out? Or is that just for the Stack ToS for Chat? It's hard for me to test on my own. Commented Nov 6 at 16:14
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    There's two separate modals - the first one is just general to chat, as far as I can tell. Hopefully that only gets displayed the first time a user enters chat generally, not every new room. Commented Nov 6 at 16:16
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    we know people don't read terms of service/conditions for sites where they are using credit cards, applying for services etc. etc. one reason for this is that life is, literally, too short to read the agreements for every site people access. so while it might sound good in theory to blame users for not wading through thousands of words before ordering a bag of potatoes or joining your chatroom, in general, this is not a reasonable requirement. Commented Nov 7 at 23:45
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    how many points do you think the average user will retain from 10,000 versus 1,000 words? for a 1 hour lecture the guidance says you should try to communicate at most 3 points. reading is different from lecture attendance, of course, but people will not retain 10,000 words of rules, even if they read them. 1 week later, they may remember 1 or 2 points, if they've read carefully and you've communicated well. Commented Nov 7 at 23:48
  • @cfr It's not just about retaining it all after a single read, like some ToS you will never read once. Rather, it's also about having a place to point users to for all the rules. Right now it's a half measure, at best, for complex, high-activity rooms with specific purposes. It's not really useful for rooms like SOCVR or Charcoal, etc. which goes to Catija's point about questioning this rollout for all rooms. Commented Nov 10 at 19:38
  • well, I don't think showing that kind of reference in a dialogue users have to check off is useful. having it available in the room, however, I can see. so I'd think for that kind of case, you'd be better with a feature split here, so that a longer version could be linked directly from the room/brought up from the room, but something shorter shown in the dialogue box. (I don't much like the dialogue box thing to access chat at all.) Commented Nov 10 at 21:29
  • and I still have my doubts about the usefulness of rules for chat which can't be communicated in fewer than 10,000 words. Commented Nov 10 at 21:32

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