What is chat?
All sites have a real time web chat component, or as we like to call it, the "third place".
The third place is a term used in the concept of community building to refer to social surroundings separate from the two usual social environments of home and the workplace. In his influential book The Great Good Place, Ray Oldenburg argues that third places are important for civil society, democracy, civic engagement, and establishing feelings of a sense of place.
Most needed are those ‘third places’ which lend a public balance to the increased privatization of home life. Third places are nothing more than informal public gathering places. The phrase ‘third places’ derives from considering our homes to be the ‘first’ places in our lives, and our work places the ‘second.’
When should I visit chat?
- for real time collaboration
- to meet the fellow members of your community in a more social environment
- for less structured, casual (but still roughly on-topic) conversation
Where is chat?
There is a link to chat in the footer of every page, as well as in the Stack Exchange site switcher menu (top right corner of the page). The chat for this site is at:
https://chat.stackoverflow.com/
Why do I need 20 rep to talk in chat?
Your reputation on chat is the same as your reputation on the parent site (or the sum of your reputation across sites, if you're visiting chat.stackexchange.com).
You can always enter chat rooms and listen with no rep at all.
We can't allow anonymous participation on chat, so we require a small bit of parent site reputation to ensure that chat is reserved for active, engaged members of the community.