A Chat room moderator or monitor as they are also known has a unique responsibility. They are in charge of making sure that the chat room is a safe place to chat in. Each day thousands of people log into the most popular chat sites. A room moderator has to watch not only what is being said in the chat room lobby page but if the chatting room allows webcams they also have to click on each individual cam to make sure that what is being broadcasted publicly in the room is allowed. This special role is not as easy as many people think. But how do you become a chat mod?
Before they are appointed as moderators they must apply. The first step in becoming a moderator is you must be a chatter of the room you want to monitor. So if you want to moderate for a room called “teen chat” you must chat in the teen chat room. You must also make sure that you meet all age requirements before you apply. If you are a teenager, you cannot apply for a room that is for people 18 years old and older. Same goes if you are an adult, you cannot apply for a teenage room. Spend a great deal of time chatting in your interested room. Make sure that other people get to know you really well. They can only do that if you chat consistently and engage others in the chat room. It helps if the other chat moderators and administrators know you. If you can become friends with them your application will most likely be approved. Chat Rooms Make sure you familiarize yourself with the chat room rules and watch other moderators do their job, this will help you when you become a mod.
Once you are ready to apply, you will need to contact the chat room administrator, if there isn’t any then contact the site administrator. You can do so via private message or email. Some sites have forums or message boards. Create a nickname preferably the same nickname you use in the chat room. Once you join the forums, search for the name of the administrator of the chat room you want to mod and message him or her. Search the forums too as sometimes there is a thread explaining who to contact and what to include in your application. Do not make a thread or post about wanting to moderate. This is frowned upon. What do you say in your application?
Some important things to mention are your nickname that you use in the chat room. Mention how much time you spend chatting in the room. This will demonstrate your activity level. Admins usually look for those who are most active. Tell them an approximate number of hours you can dedicate to moderating. Do not lie about the amount of time you can mod for them. Tell them what country you are from. Sometimes they may need people from different time zones who can cover different times. And lastly, tell them why they should pick you. Why do you stand out from others? Do you have experience? What skills do you possess that can make you a better mod than the applicant before you?
Will you be getting paid? No. All moderator position on chatting sites are voluntary. You will not be getting paid. You will be helping when you have time out of your day. What are some of the things chat mod do?
A chat mod as mentioned earlier is in charge of a particular chatting room or side room. They quickly scan the chat lobby and webcams to make sure everyone is chatting appropriately. If you see something that breaks the rules such as someone posting their email address in the main page, you will have to issue a few warnings asking the person to stop. Include the person’s name in your warning and tell them what it is that they are doing that is not allowed. Here is an example: “Tom, please stop sending out your email address, that’s not allowed and if you continue I may have to kick you out of this room.” If they persist and you have issued multiple warnings you may proceed to kick the user out. A kick is a temporary ban. Once a person is kicked they will not be able to enter the chat room again until an admin removes the IP from the kicked list.
Hopefully this guide clears out for you questions you may have about moderating for a chat site. Remember, it’s not easy, it will require time and patience on your part. Don’t expect to join a site today and get a moderator position tomorrow. It just doesn’t work that way. You may have to spend anywhere from a few weeks to a month before you can send an application, because if you do it sooner no one will know who you are and your chances of being rejected are almost 100%.
Chatting Rooms, more commonly known as chat rooms, are virtual places where people meet online to talk to each other with text, audio and video. Chat rooms have been very popular since the early days of the internet and their popularity has not faded over time.
People of all walks of life enjoy using chatting rooms to talk, joke, share their experiences, exchange ideas, thoughts or simply get to know each other. Chat rooms are like interactive message boards where you post a message and get responses right away. Additionally, chatting rooms typically come with private messaging features which allow chatters to take a public conversation with one individual into a private area.
The invention of webcams certainly had a great impact on chatting habits. While in the early days chat meant exchanging text messages, now chatting is a multimedia experience where chatters exchange not only text but also audio and video. You can use a microphone to have a voice conversation with other chatters and you can use a webcam to have a video chat as well. In fact some people don’t even bother typing they simply talk and broadcast themselves with their webcams; they have video conferences instead of simple text-chatting sessions.
Some of the most popular chatting rooms are offered by major Internet companies such as Yahoo and America Online. Yahoo Chat used to be the most popular chatting place of a large number of internet chatters. Unfortunately because of its success it was also a preferred target of spammers and bot creators.- Bots are computer programs that are used to spam chat rooms, they usually use female screen names to entice male users to click on links to adult sites. -Yahoo chat rooms were also used by pedophiles, like many free chat rooms available on the web. Nowadays, many restrictions have been added to Yahoo chat to prevent abuses by spammers and sex predators. AIM chat rooms are also available and are still quite a bit popular especially among people living in America. Google also offers chat rooms, in a 3D environment, with Lively. howtodiscuss The Google Lively rooms can be added to other sites and people visiting those sites can enter the rooms and chat. Social networking sites also allow their users to join chat rooms. Myspace has chat rooms available to users who are logged in where they can chat with other Myspace users online and present in the rooms. Some ‘older’ sites such as ICQ also have chat rooms though they are not as popular as they used to be when there were fewer other chatting rooms to compete with.
Of course major internet companies are not the only ones to offer free chat rooms, in fact you’ll find chatting rooms available on many less known sites. The difference with major chat rooms and non-major chat rooms is of course the number of users you’ll find. Typically Yahoo chat rooms and AIM chat rooms will always have many users present and chatting. Google Lively is a more recent site therefore it has yet to gain the momentum chat giants such as Yahoo has.
Some chat rooms like the Yahoo chat rooms require that the user not only join Yahoo but also install a piece of software on his/her computer. Other chat rooms such as AIM chat rooms do require user registration but are completely web-based and don’t require any software download. There are also chat rooms that don’t require any form of registration at all, the user simply chooses a nickname and enters the chat room.
While many chat rooms are available for free and accessible to anybody who meet the required criteria to enter the rooms- like age restriction or site membership – others are only accessible when the user pays a fee. Indeed there are paid chat rooms as well. Usually paid chat rooms are moderated chat rooms which are dedicated to a restricted group of individuals. Very often you will find paid chat rooms on dating sites. Some paid chat rooms are offered as part of a membership package for a paid site. Sometimes those paid chat rooms will also allow limited access to non-paying members.
Nowadays anybody can create his/her own free chat rooms simply by adding a few lines of codes on his webpage. Many people add chat rooms on their profiles on social networking sites or on their blogs. Those chat rooms allow anybody who visits a web page to chat with the owner of the page if he/she’s online or with anybody else visiting the page at that time.
Internet chatting rooms still have many glorious years ahead of them while they will certainly evolve with technology and web surfing habits they will still remain popular as internet users are continuously looking for quality chat rooms to join.
