Muscle Chat Room is an online chat network where bodybuilders and fitness enthusiasts come together to discuss nutrition, supplements, training methods and more. Membership to Muscle Chat is free, enabling members to easily customize their profile by creating instant messages and private groups as well as upload photos and videos directly into their profiles. Members also enjoy accessing their starred messages and favorite channels from any device!
Chat rooms can be an effective tool for building community online, yet can be challenging to oversee. Moderation is essential to creating a safe space; finding volunteers to moderate can be hard, and spam, trolling and threats can quickly turn a chat room toxic – this is one reason many sites have moved away from using chat rooms in favor of other forms of community building activities.
I’ve experimented with creating chat rooms that only operate when a moderator is present, prompting curators to form teams of moderators in order to take ownership and foster participation in their chats.
Additionally, I have also included visual and textual design elements that promote thoughtful engagement. For instance, I added a feature highlighting starred messages so they are easier to find in the main chat list; although its impact may be minimal on conversation quality it may provide participants with some incentive to interact in an intelligent fashion.