The one thing that has always been different about our site when compared to others is that we don't try be politically correct thought police. Most other disability related chat rooms have forbidden topics and forbidden words and the end result is unrealistic sanitized conversations where much is said but nothing new is learned. It is perfectly acceptable to have respectful conversations about sex, politics and religion at our site.
Perhaps those other sites fill a specific need but this site is about filling a mind starved for ideas. When I started Disabilities-R-Us, the idea was to create a place you could come to, meet interesting people, and at the end of the day you could go away maybe having learned something you did not know before.
To make this possible while at the same time keeping things simple, there is only one "rule" for the entire site.. It's "Be Nice."
But, yes, there always is a but... from time to time I may recommend certain ideas as suggested guidelines. They're not rules set in stone, they're just ideas that I think may help things flow better and I ask people to consider them.
One of the suggested guidelines is in regard to coming into the room and asking things like "Is everyone here disabled?", "What is everyone's disability?" or "Whats everyone's A/S/L (age, sex, location.) The first question is a bit silly because the site is called Disabilities-R-Us, not Cooking-R-Us or Kittens-R-Us, etc. We also make it clear that we throw out devotees and fetishists on the spot so it's safe to assume that virtually everyone in the room is either disabled, or is married to a disabled person or has a disabled child. The last two questions are okay, but be polite and tell us all about YOU before you start asking all about US. Nobody enjoys feeling like they are being interrogated by a stranger. Tell us all about you first and we will surely tell you about ourselves.
A recent and completely misunderstood suggested guideline was about greetings in the chat room. When you come into the room, rather than say hello to each person in the room one by one, just say "Hello Everyone." This way, you're not severely impacting anything if there is a conversation going on. If you're already in the room AND there is a conversation going on AND someone new enters, wait a couple seconds before saying hello. If nobody else says hello, then greet the person. If some people have already greeted the person, then just continue on with the already ongoing conversation.
The reason I suggest this is that a few times recently, we have had days where people say hello well over 4000 times in a single day. There may be 20+ people having a deep conversation and when someone comes in and all the hellos start, the conversation come to an end. A minute later, another person will come in, and then another and before you know it, maybe 10 to 20 pages of hello's are on the screen and nothing else. When new people come in, all they see is the hellos, followed by silence because everyone has forgotten what the conversation was all about, so they assume we're all boring or stupid and leave, never to return. In our attempts to be overly polite, the hellos then go on to the requisite "how are you?" and this completely ends ALL existing conversations and changes it to something else. This is okay when the room is slow but when its active and 20 or so people come and go every hour, it makes real conversations impossible. The whole idea is so get people to be more courteous of others.
I watched this not less than 10 minutes ago. We were having a long ongoing conversation about a specific topic and 3 people came in over 3 minutes, 8 pages of hellos were said back and forth, then those same 3 people left without ever having said anything else. When they left, the room was dead silent because few could remember what we were talking about.
Another suggestion which hasn't been much of a problem lately, but was in the past was people asking permission to private message someone. I personally discourage this practice because the problem with asking 'Hey PERSON, can I PM you?' is that everyone else in the room doesn't see that. They see this --> 'Hey PERSON, I have to tell you a big secret about someone else in this room! Nobody else can know, except you, and anyone else you tell!' It can lead to gossip and gossip destroys chat rooms.
The other bad thing about asking permission first is that the person you are wanting to talk to may not be looking at the screen so they wont see your request. If you feel bad about it, start it out with "I hate to bother you but..." Remember, it's easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission!
Again, these are NOT rules set in stone, they're just suggestions that hopefully make us more communicative.
Suggestions for chatters
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all buggered up
There was a message board where all the converation conisted of was 2 threads, thread 1 was the good morning thread thread no2 was the good night thread.5000 good mornings 5000 good nights nobody said anything in between. The site no longer exists.
I really am not sure how to re-post this topic but I think that it would be good for people to read it considering it mentions the reason the room was started. We can get back to being nice because we need each other.