In a discussion titled ‘Why can’t I chat with @moderators on meta?’, Moin reports confusion over being unable to send a chat message to the @moderators group, noting a discrepancy between the group’s displayed member count (8) and the chat interface’s count (22), suspecting AI-related users may be inflating the latter. Heliosurge speculates the count might include category moderators, but Moin doubts this, as Meta likely doesn’t have 14 category moderators. tobiaseigen acknowledges a potential bug in member counting for automatic groups like @moderators, and suggests filing a bug report — though notes that on Meta, direct group chats with all moderators are intentionally discouraged to avoid noise. Instead, users are advised to flag posts or send a PM to @moderators for concerns. Heliosurge proposes a site setting to control who can initiate chats with special groups, which tobiaseigen encourages discussing in a new topic. Moin hesitates to file a bug report due to lack of reproducible steps or evidence it affects other sites. NiceOldGuy suggests the issue may relate to group mention settings, sharing a screenshot of group permissions. The thread highlights both a possible UI/bug issue and Meta’s policy preference against mass moderator chats.
It’s a little confusing that sending a chat message to @moderators isn’t possible. The group page says the group has 8 members, but the chat says it has 22.
Of course, it’s possible to create a group chat with moderators by manually adding all the users.
Wondering if it might be counting category mods?
With moderators might you need to create a category linked to group similar to Staff maybe?
Why do I need a category? I don’t want to create a channel based on a category where moderators can chat. I just want to send a DM to a group, which is possible as long as the group has no more than 20 members Start a group chat with a Discourse group.
I don’t think category moderators are a problem because I doubt there are 14 category moderators at Meta.
Is this a question specifically about this community, or generally about how chatting with moderators can work?
There does seem to be a weird bug that you’ve uncovered about the number of members the moderators group seems to have - can you start a Contribute > Bug topic? The automatic groups like admin and moderators are special and do have some unusual behaviors that can get confusing, and we’d like to improve that.
Regarding this community, I’d say we’d prefer to not have members start chat with all of us. That will get too noisy and chaotic. If you have a concern about a topic, flag it and we will see it and one of us will respond. Also the flagging system will help by unlisting topics that need to be unlisted, letting us quickly delete spam posts and accounts, etc.
If you want to reach out to us about something else, then write @moderators a PM.
Starting a topic here in Contribute > Site feedback is also fine if you have ideas for improving how we manage this community.
Maybe a site setting for each special automatic group? Ie who can start a chat with group?
Could even be a general group setting as well maybe.
Let’s talk about the feature in a new topic - either in a Contribute > Bug topic or Contribute > Feature topic, as you see fit.
I thought it’s a little weak for a bug report because I only noticed a fact, but I couldn’t check why it happens on Meta. So, I couldn’t provide steps to reproduce it or determine whether this issue is related to something that would affect other sites or is specific to Meta. Maybe you just hide some users from what I see when I check the moderators group 
So, yes, the question of why sending a chat message to moderators doesn’t work was specific to Meta. I knew it could result in a bug report, but I don’t have the necessary information for such a report.
