Chat Room Admin Guidelines

Chat room admin guidelines

By creating a permanent chat room, you agree to accept responsibility to 'admin' that chat room to be sure that the activities within conform to our Terms of Service. Read this document carefully to make sure you understand your responsibilities before continuing. This document contains reference information you may find useful at a later time.

You may use this facility to create a chat room on Matrix Messenger in which you are the administrator of the chat room. Being an administrator allows you to moderate the chat room by giving you the power to take away a person's microphone and the ability to bounce (remove) a person in the event that they are extremely disruptive or abusive.

Your nickname will be identified as an 'admin' account in your chat room by having an @ sign precede your name. The @ sign indicates admin capabilities. Matrix Messenger personnel have admin capabilities in all chat rooms they enter. They are differentiated from chat room admins by having their nickname appear in red in addition to having the @ sign.

This document will describe the abilities and guidelines for being a chat room administrator. If you abuse the admin privileges, your chat room and your ability to create future chat rooms will be removed, so please make sure you understand what is required in the admin role.

When you create a chat room, you will have the option of specifying a lockword or not. If you specify a lockword, anyone trying to join your chat room will be asked to specify the lockword before they are allowed to enter. In this way, you can control who may enter your chat room by who you tell the lockword to. If you do not specify a lockword, the chat room is open to everyone.

Chat room admins You may allow an unlimited number of people to 'admin' your chat room with you. When you create the chat room you can add people to a list under the 'manage admins' tab in the chat room setup area. Chat room admins may use various tools to control the chat room including restricting who may speak, type, and send video. Chat room admins can also 'bounce' and ban users from the chat room.

'Super admins' are trusted or senior members of the chat room with extra ability.

Information you must supply

Chat room type

There are 2 types of chat rooms. The most common is the User rooms (Free) type. It allows you to own, maintain and admin your own chat room on Matrix Messenger. You may open this chat room at any time and it remains open only so long as people are in the chat room. When the last person leaves, the chat room closes.

The second type of group is Matrix messenger premium chat room (Fee based). Any individual or organization who would like a chat room on Matrix Messenger for any type of commercial related activity must choose this chat room type. Unlike other chat rooms, you may choose to leave your chat room open even when it is empty.

Your chat room appears in the category of your choice but also appears in a 'root' category. There is a monthly fee for this service which varies with the maximum amount of people allowed in your chat room at any one time. There is additional information that pertains to premium chat rooms at the bottom of this document. The same warning applies here as in the last section regarding popups that display another web page when the user closes down the window. That is not allowed.

Chat room name
The name of the chat room. You are not allowed to make any chat room with a title that defames, disparages or excludes any race, creed, religion, age group, gender, national origin, or any other organization, business entity or individual person. You also may not make any chat room that condones or promotes the use of drugs, encourages software piracy, child pornography, or any other illegal activity.

Category
Matrix Messenger chat rooms are organized into categories. You will have to select from a dropdown list which category you prefer your chat room to be found in by others. 

Ratings
Similar to a movie rating. The options are G, R or A. G rated chat rooms must be suitable to all audiences including minors. R and A rated chat rooms are suitable for adults only and the text is not filtered what so ever. The difference between these two chat rooms is that an A rated chat room allows sexually explicit language where an R chat room does not. Note users have to explicitly turn on an option to see adult chat room (A). The default every time someone logs in is not to show adult chat rooms. 

Lockword
An optional field. If you specify a value in this field, anyone not knowing your lockword will be prevented from entering your chat room. Anyone trying to join your chat room will be asked to specify the lockword before they are allowed to enter.

Intro message
An optional field. If specified, every time someone joins your chat room, they will be automatically greeted with this message.

Bouncing Someone
If someone is being severely offensive or disruptive, you have the power to remove (bounce) them from the chat room. To bounce someone, you right click on their name in the member list. A pop up menu will be displayed where you should select 'bounce'.  When someone is bounced, they are prevented from reentering your chat room for 24 hours. 

If the number of bounces is excessive overall, the chat room may be closed down permanently and your account restricted from creating new chat rooms in the future.

Muting Someone
By right clicking on someone's nickname, you can 'red dot' them. A 'red dot' means they cannot speak. You would use this for example to take the microphone away from someone who is talking too long or is deliberately trying to tie up the chat room. Normally you would take the microphone away and then soon after, give it back. 

Muting Everyone
It may be desirable to mute everyone's microphone except your own to help moderate a chat room. You then can choose to individually turn someone's mic on, let them speak, and then take the mic away. To do this, select the 'Red Dot Whole Room' option under the 'Admin' menu. This will remove all the mics from everyone except yourself. New people joining the chat room will default to having their mic turned off. To restore everyone's mic back, choose the 'Unreddot Whole Room' option under the 'Admin' menu. This will restore everyone's mic and new people joining will default to their mic being on. 

The Static Text Message
When your chat room is open, you will find that right below the banner area is a one line static text field. This one line never scrolls so is always visible. You can use this field to display a message to your users that will stay on the screen and not scroll off. Some examples of how to use this field are to display a URL to a website of interest, or to display a welcome message, or perhaps to display a topic of the day. You have the ability to change this field at any time by simply typing over what is currently there and hitting Enter. Make sure the cursor is at the end of the line when you hit Enter. This area is only editable to the chat room admins. Your members see this field all the time but cannot not modify it. 

Co-administrators
You may allow an unlimited number of people to 'admin' your chat room with you by adding them to your 'manage admins' list in your chat room setup area. Anyone who is on that list can open or join your chat room as an 'admin'. The procedure for them to open or join your chat room as admin is similar to how you open up the chat room. They must select the Join 'Room as Admin' option under the 'Action' menu, then select your nickname from the dropdown list and enter the Admin Code. The chat room will open automatically.

If you wish to change who may co-admin your room with you, you can modify the list of people under the 'manage admins' tab in your chat room setup area. Pick your admins wisely because you are responsible for their actions as well as your own. Violations of these guidelines by you or your admins will cause the loss of your chat room and the ability to create new chat rooms in the future. 

Changing the definition of your chat room while it's open
Changes you make to your groups such as changing rating, name, category, plus most other changes, do not take affect while your chat room is open. You should always close your chat room, then make your changes to the chat rooms definition and then reopen your chat room. 

Reasons for removal after acceptance
Here are some of the possible reasons your chat room may be taken away from you after you create it:

1) Misrepresenting yourself as a Matrix Messenger person.

2) Continuous allowance of language not appropriate to your chat room rating.

3) Abuse of the bouncing and/or muting privileges.

4) Offensive behavior on your part towards your members.

5) Abuse of Matrix Messenger personnel.

Matrix Messenger Uptime
Although Matrix Messenger strives to be a product that is up 24 hours, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, there will be times Matrix Messenger is offline. Reasons for outages include but are not limited to software and hardware maintenance upgrades, ISP related problems and equipment failure. Matrix Messenger makes no particular representation about its uptime, but it is expected that future uptime will be similar to our past performance, which has been near 99% uptime. 

Chat Room Controls
Matrix Messenger offers a variety of controls for you to maintain order in your chat room. Some features are more apparent than others so we will break them down into three areas for you. 

Premium Rooms
Any chat room opened on Matrix Messenger that relates to any type of commercial activity, needs to be opened as a premium type chat room in Matrix Messenger. Premium chat rooms are a fee based service that have a number of advantages over other chat rooms

- You have the option of leaving the chat room always open even when there is no one in the chat room.

- Your chat room will have a color depending on the subscription you purchase for the chat room.

- Your chat room will have the ability to enable three mics so three users can talk on the microphone at the same time.