What do you think of the current state of the chat?
Overall it's fine. I think we may be a bit too slow to acknowledge drafts up for critique; given how many good articles have been borne from 19 and the other channels, it's probably the most important thing we do. Ops could be a bit quicker to call stops on off-topic chat when there's a draft present. I don't necessarily agree with the current sentiment going in the Op thread, an argument that hinges on toeing the line and kicking/banning people that do so for too long, or generally don't fit with the mindset of the rest of the channel. That's a slippery slope, and it can end up not much better than not having any rules at all for ops to obey in the long term. If you can't qualify what they're doing that is kick/ban-worthy, you should probably hold off on disciplinary action until you can. That's all hypothetical, I haven't seen any bans in the last several months that I disagree with, but I'm playing devil's advocate to point out what can go wrong with that train of thought.
Do you have any issues with the current chat rules? If so, what are they?
Nothing that I can think of that I didn't address above.
What other issues do you have with the Chat Guide, if any?
Primarily the "Connecting" tab needs a pretty thorough rewrite for clarity. The order the information is presented is all out of whack, and it's not surprising we have people in 17 regularly that can't figure it out. I take it for granted that I've used IRC for like 11 years, so I basically just scanned that page for the server, port, and channel. I would propose reorganizing it into three sections: "Information for Experienced IRC users" with just the server, port and channel, and a note that you must register and identify against your nick before joining; "Guide For Beginners" that gives a step by step on using mibbit, connecting to a server, registering a nickname, verifying it via email, identifying with that nick, joining the channel, and setting the auto-identify and auto-join feature of mibbit; and a "Additional Information" section that lists alternate clients and a blurb on alternate channels that says "See Other Tab".
On the Chat Ops tab, Kens is out of whack.
The "Discussion Suggestions tab" can be renamed to "Discussion Etiquette" and mention that off-topic conversation should come to a stop when drafts are on the floor, and then go on to the rest of the content.
