As well as the main "Empty Closets Chat" room in the chatroom, we added a "Support and Advice" room recently. Also people can make additional temporary rooms for their own discussions. The main room is of course open to all. However if people are having a discussion in Support and Advice or have created another room, these discussions may not be intended as public and welcome others. If you enter any of these rooms and are asked to leave PLEASE RESPECT THAT REQUEST. We had an incident earlier where a certain member persistently entered and interfered in a discussion in Support and Advice, asked others to go in there too, and posted insulting remarks in there. This behaviour was completely unacceptable and from a review of the logs it may have adversely affected the serious discussion that was taking place in there. We are still discussing this in the mods area to decide what action is appropriate, however it is likely that the person concerned will have his access to the chatroom removed temporarily. Please do not post anything about the specific event or people concerned. Disruptive behaviour will not be tolerated in the chatroom, whether or not it is in direct violation of the rules. Empty Closets is intended to be "a safe place to chat", and having members interfere with chatroom discussions goes against this ideal. It is clear from recent events that we will need to moderate the chatroom in a stricter manner to ensure that the actions of a few members do not spoil it for others.
If you are creating a room for a chat with a few people and want to keep other people out you can set a password when you create it. Then you can give the password to those you invite by PM or a private conversation. That would prevent anyone uninvited from intruding on your discussion. All self-created rooms will be automatically removed if they have no activity for 5 minutes.
Because we don't want loads of unused user-created rooms on the system. They only expire when they are unused for a period of time (15 mins), not when they are in use.
you can't until you become a full member, sorry it is explained in the Important Changes thread it is discussed in the Discussion thread
You need to be a Full Member. You can apply for that by filling out the application form (http://www.emptyclosets.com/forum/newthread.php?do=memberupgrade), but it's strongly suggested that members have a minimum of 50 posts and have been active for a minimum of two weeks. The application form itself states in big red writing "Do not apply until you have been actively posting in the forums for at least two weeks." People who do not meet these requirements are usually declined. The only exceptions are members who have been active in the chatroom before the restrictions were brought in and never posted much in the forum.
We will be updating the PM that gets sent to new members in the next few days to include the chatroom and PM restrictions and also to introduce the advisors.
