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The new chat facility is up and running.  In this article, I want to provide a short "how to" technical briefing for online meeting convenors, a/k/a chat hosts, who will be leading online meetings there.  In the first part I'll be talking about the bells and whistles that are available to every chat participant, and that you as chat leader can use to play your role more effectively.  In the second part I'll discuss the additional tools available to chat meeting leaders for controlling the occasional situation where an intruder becomes disruptive.  

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If you have not already done so, please click to http://www.unhooked.com/chat/index.html and view the new premises.  When you enter you will be in the Meeting Room. If you click the Rooms tab on the right side of the chat panel you'll see the current "floor plan" of the chat house. You can move between open rooms by clicking the Rooms tab on the right side of the window, then clicking the room you want, then clicking the "Enter" box under the Rooms tab.  The supply of other open rooms varies from time to time. 

Currently, there's also an Auditorium, a Board Room, a WO Patio, and a Convenor's Kitchen. Each of these rooms currently shows a little padlock next to it, indicating that a password is required to enter.  The Auditorium will be unlocked when we are ready to have guest speakers with moderated discussions, which we plan to start doing one of these days.  The Board Room, as the name implies, is for meetings of the LifeRing Board of Directors.  The WO Patio is a private room for members of the Women's email list.  The Convenor's Kitchen is for LifeRing convenor's chats.  We can create other rooms, locked or open, as needed.  

Please click on the "Users" tab now and take a moment to familiarize yourself with the four icons you see underneath it.  The first icon shows a face with a little blue letter "i" on it.  This is for "info."  When you click on the nickname of a user in the list underneath the icons, then click the "i" icon, a little window will pop up with any information that this user has entered in their personal Profile.  Each user can click the "Settings" button and enter a variety of personal information, as well as changing their icon.  This information remains there only for the duration of the user's visit to the chat house; it is not saved.  Any other user can view it by clicking on that user's "i" icon.  You, as the convenor of the meeting, might want to encourage chat room guests to enter some information in their profile so that other participants can get to know them better.  You might take the lead by entering such information about yourself, so that visitors know who their chat host is.  It takes only a moment.

The second of the four icons under the "Users" tab shows a face with an ear next to it.  This is the "whisper" or "private message" button.  It pops up a small window with which you can have a private conversation with any person in the room.  As the meeting leader, you might want to use the "whisper" button to help move the meeting along or to bring it back on track.  Since no one else in the room knows that you are having a private conversation, you can avoid the appearance of rudeness and disruption that often attaches when people talk "on the side" during a face meeting.  

The third icon under the "Users" tab shows a face with a little red flag by it.  If you first click on a user in the list under the icons and then click this "flag" icon, your selected user's messages will be highlighted in your chat window.  This icon has no effect on what other chat visitors see in their window.  It is a convenient device for you to track the input of a participant in whose words you take a particular interest.  If you click the "flag" icon again, the highlight is turned off.  

The fourth icon under the "Users" tab shows an ear with a diagonal red bar through it.  If you first click on a user's nickname in the list underneath the icons, and then click the "ear/bar" icon, that user's messages will disappear from your chat messages window.  It is the same as tuning that visitor out.  This button only affects what you see in your own chat message window.  It has no effect on what other room guests see.  If they also want to tune a certain participant out, they must click the "ear/bar" icon on their own screens.  If everyone in the room tunes an obnoxious participant out with this button, it has the same effect as if that person were not there.  They can talk all they want but no one hears them.  Unless someone posts to the message window that they have tuned the user out, the affected user will not even know that no one is listening.  

These four buttons allow you, as the online meeting convenor, a useful set of tools for helping the meeting be a bonding and sobriety-empowering experience for all the participants.  The buttons for profiles, private messages, highlights, and for tuning people out may be all that you need to play your role as meeting leader.  These buttons are available to each participant in the room.  If you have a core group of participants who know the buttons and are committed to supporting the meeting, you may never need any other technical tools to do your job.  Your interpersonal skills, your experience, your diplomacy, your openness and candor will be the key ingredients of your success as a meeting leader, 95 per cent of the time.

Another resource that might help you is the Chat Help and FAQ page.  Among other things, it spells out the general purpose of the chat experience and some obvious "no-nos."  You might want to refer a troublesome visitor to that page before taking further action.  

However, experience shows that chat meetings are occasionally attacked by hackers who spam the room with pro-drug messages, or with religious venom or other negativity, or who flood the room with rapid-fire junk by typing a few letters and hitting the Enter key repeatedly. Sometimes these people are high or drunk; sometimes they are just on a personal mission of hatred or vandalism. People would hardly dare such disruptions in face to face meetings.  But the physical distance and anonymity of  cyberspace emboldens some individuals to behave with extremes of obnoxiousness that would be almost unthinkable in "meatspace."  Such individuals are sometimes quite skilled technically, and they could easily defeat even the most skillful online meeting leader's technical protection efforts using the four buttons discussed above.  Fortunately, our new chat facility also contains some additional tools for meeting leaders faced with such threats to the meeting.  In order to learn about these tools, you need to leave the chat room the way you came in, and walk around the side of the building toward the service entrance at the back.  

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There is a second entrance to the online meeting room on unhooked.com, with the url:  http://www.unhooked.com/chat/ChatMaster.html   This is the staff entrance.  You need a special User ID and a password to enter here.  Please contact the Chat Coordinator (see http://www.unhooked.com/chat/index.html for the email address) to obtain your ID and password as chat host.  After you enter the correct ID and password, you'll be in the chat room Front Porch again, just as you were when you came in via the front gate in the usual way.  Nothing at first seems to be different.  However, if you look closely you'll see two important changes.  Number one, your name is in bold blue type so that anyone in the room can recognize you as the host.  Number two, you have a fifth icon along with the familiar four on the right side of the chat window. 

The fifth icon has a red circle with a diagonal bar through it, the international traffic sign for "barred" or "prohibited."  When you click on the name of someone in the Users List and then move your mouse over the fifth icon, the help message at the bottom of the screen says "Kick this person."  This icon appears only on your screen as chat host; the other participants in the chat room don't have it.  If you click on the nickname of a user in the Users list, and then click on the "barred" icon, that user will be "kicked out" of the room.

 Specifically what happens when you click the icon is that a little window pops up asking whether you mean to bar that user.  If you click OK, the affected user gets a private message advising that they have been kicked out of the room, and the software posts a public message advising that the user has left the room -- the same message that posts automatically when a user  leaves a room voluntarily.  In other words, the kill is discreetly done.  The banned user knows what has happened, but they are not embarrassed publicly.  If you think it's appropriate you can then post a message to the room explaining your action.  

Most users who have been kicked out of a room will take the hint and go elsewhere.  But in a few cases, people thrive on negative attention and will take the boot as a challenge.  Nothing prevents a kicked user from changing their user name and coming back into the room and making more trouble.  You can swiftly kick them again, and in nine cases out of ten they will get tired of the game and go away.

If that doesn't work, you need to call on the Chat Coordinator.  If you are the Chat Coordinator, you can not only kick a user out, you can also bar them from re-entering.  In the little dialog box that first pops up when the Chat Coordinator clicks the "barred" icon, there are two checkboxes at the bottom.  These give the user's IP address and the server ("host") from which they are accessing the Internet.  The IP address is a number such as 84.62.182.95, and the "host" will be a combination of such a number with some words and perhaps other numbers.  If you click the first checkbox (IP address) then that user will be unable to re-enter the chat site using their present Internet connection.  It won't help them to change nicknames.  When they try to enter the front gate a box will pop up advising them that they are barred.  In effect, they are banned from the chat facility. 

This will be the end of the story for most harassers.  In order to defeat this barrier, the disrupter will have to acquire a different IP address.  Unfortunately, for people who access the Net through an ordinary home modem line or a private DSL connection, getting a new IP address is a matter of shutting down their current connection and then establishing a fresh one.  Most ISPs assign IP addresses dynamically, so you get a temporary new one each time you log on.  Should you encounter a persistent disrupter who knows this and insists on trying to re-enter the chat room using a new IP address, as Chat Coordinator you still have another weapon.  When the invader comes back in, kick him out again, and this time check the second of the two checkboxes in the little kick-out window.  This will bar anyone who approaches the chat site from that server, regardless of IP address.  

If you are the Chat Coordinator and you now click on the words "Digi Chat" in black up near the left upper corner of the chat window, a menu will drop down.  Click on "Set Site Options" and you will see a list of banned users -- actually, a list of Internet addresses, not nicknames.  The user you just banned will be on this list.  You can edit an entry to make its target broader or narrower.  You could, for example, bar anyone who logs on from aol.com.  Needless to say, be careful here or you will inadvertently bar the innocent.  

The "kick" button and the "banish" checkboxes are weapons of last resort, designed only for situations when all else fails.  Hopefully you will never have to use them.  Diplomacy, candor, and your other interpersonal qualities are always the methods of choice for ensuring the quality of the meeting as a sober, secular, self-help experience.  However, there are a few people who cannot be reached through interpersonal skills.  For those exceptional situations, it's important to know that you have other tools, and to be skillful using them.  

It might be a good idea, and fun besides, to pair up with a buddy and to take turns being chat hosts and kicking one another out.  Just a few rounds of practice can give you an extra confidence boost as meeting convenor, knowing that no matter what happens, you will prevail.  

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The drop-down menu in the upper left also contains another useful tool, the "Send Chat Broadcast" item.  Click on this, and a text box opens into which you can type a message that will be sent to all users in all rooms. Only you have this menu item; the chat room guests don't have it on their screens.  It's kind of like the PA system in a building.  You might use this, for example, at the beginning of your scheduled online meeting time to invite people who are still on the Front Porch to come into the Living Room for the meeting.  

The Digi-Chat software contains many other features that we are only beginning to learn at this time.  We can, for example, change the banner ads, the icons, and the emoticons; we can control the automatic "house" messages that pop up; and we will be able eventually to set up Honored Guest chats in the auditorium with a moderator who screens messages.  If you have questions or suggestions relative to any of the features of chat house operation, please contact the Chat Coordinator.  The DigiChat software appears to have a rich and worthwhile feature set that will hopefully serve our needs for quite some time.   Already the chat room's ease of access, quick response time, and graphic attractiveness have notably increased the traffic and the number of volunteer chat hosts over what was possible with the old provider.

All these features, however, come at a price.  It costs LifeRing just short of $50 per month to lease the chat facility from the host DigiChat.  At a face to face meeting, it is customary for the meeting convenor to pass the hat or the basket near the end of the meeting to defray the organization's expenses.  As you know, LifeRing does not have any financial Higher Powers.  We are free-standing and we need to be self-supporting.  Therefore, as chat meeting convenor, please get into the habit of reminding your scheduled meeting participants to support the chat room financially.  Ask them to send a check or money order made to "Lifering" to LifeRing Service Center, 1440 Broadway Suite 312, Oakland CA 94612.  They can earmark it "chat" to designate the specific purpose of the donation if they wish.  All such donations are tax-deductible, and all donations of $25 or more will be acknowledged in writing. 

The chat room is a wonderful place for bringing people together around sobriety, secularity, and self-help.  It is a lifering in cyberspace.  You as chat host have a tremendous opportunity to be useful to our fellow people who are struggling with alcohol and other drug problems.  As we all know, sometimes it just takes one empathetic ear to tilt the balance inside a person toward sobriety.  By learning the four public buttons in the chat room and mastering the additional powers available only to chat facility staff, you can help to ensure that the online meeting is a quality experience for all concerned.  And by helping others you very probably also help yourself. 

-- Marty N. 6/1/01 updated 6/24/03