Creating separate ‘Allow Chat Uploads’ settings for Public Channels and Personal Chat

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The discussion is about creating separate ‘Allow Chat Uploads’ settings for Public Channels and Personal Chat. mcwumbly and sok777 agree that having separate options is better for moderation purposes. sok777 would disallow uploads in public chat due to difficulty in moderation, but allow them in personal chats.

maiki shares their experience with communities where uploads have not been an issue and suggests incorporating upload permissions into trust levels. sok777 mentions that their community is all-ages and has not had issues, but wants to take precautionary measures.

maiki explores the moderation process and suggests that chat moderation is similar to topic moderation, with flagged messages appearing in the review queue. They note that different community configurations use chat in various ways, and sok777 acknowledges that their concerns about chat moderation might be unfounded, as chat can be moderated similarly to topics with flagging and deletion.

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If they were separate in the future, where would you allow uploads and where would you disallow them?

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Uploads not sending in Personal Chat with 'Chat Allow Uploads' (in public channels) disabled
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I’d probably disallow publicly but keep it for personal chats between people who want to share stuff with each other. The main reason is that it’s hard to moderate a public chat and keep it safe and family friendly.

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Would you mind describing the demographics you know of for your community?

I had this same concern, but so far it hasn’t come up on communities where I’m active, such as:

  • here, on Meta
  • my family’s forums where we need to have it family-friendly
  • an open to the public site with general discussion (so anyone off the internet)

So it gets me :thinking:: could we incorporate it into trust levels?

That could benefit from the two strong points of TLs: learning the tools available while gradually allowing more permissions.

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It’s just a hobby-based community, so it’s for all ages. We haven’t had an issue, but it’s easier to delete/moderate topics vs chats which could potentially become more toxic/graphic.

Just a precautionary measurement I guess?

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We’d love to hear your pain points in this regard. :slight_smile: If we can address the “ease” of moderating chat, everyone would be happier! :tada:

I got myself a “timeout” from here on Meta yesterday, to experience the moderation from the perspective of both an admin and a trouble-user.

Flagged messages from chat came up in the review queue, and I was able to take similar actions on the messages, including deleting it from the queue page. :+1:

Then I was unable to interact on the site for a while (though I could still read), the same user flow for moderation of topics.

Of course this doesn’t address the other side of moderation, which is who is flagging/reporting. I think I run into this less often because I don’t participate in “firehose” chat channels, so objectable content doesn’t “fly by”, we have managable feedback loops for our various community sizes.

Exploring this made me realize: a lot of different configurations of people use chat.

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I see your points. I guess it could work just as well as topics, where if many people flag it gets deleted. It might just be my own thinking that chat is a less controlled environment?

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