…they don’t though? You’re IN THE Chat (aka the name of the thing, Discourse Chat), looking for a CHANNEL. You wouldn’t be in the “Channel” program looking for a chat. They aren’t used interchangeably. That’s like saying you’re in a Room looking for an mIRC. “Chat channel” is also super redundant, what else would the channel in the Chat be? The forum channel? The chat forum?
You can’t add a channel here because you don’t run the site? It would be pretty silly to allow thousands of people to make their own public channels for the site. You can add a personal DM by clicking the + in the DM section, however…