# Chat Access Policy



## ffemt8978 (Aug 11, 2008)

EMTLife.com is, and always has been, committed to being the #1 Online Forum for EMS Discussion. We're constantly striving to improve ourselves, and provide our members with a place that they can come to and discuss anything related to EMS in an environment that is unique.

We've had our growing pains over the years, but have managed to deal with them on an individual basis. As many of you are aware, we've had some issues in the chat room recently that were a little bit too much to deal with individually. This has caused us to take another look at the chat room. During this process, we solicited input from you, our members, and have come up with the following changes.

We realize that this may upset some members, but we feel this will improve the chat room and the forum as a whole.

_*EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY, CHAT ROOM ACCESS WILL REQUIRE A MINIMUM OF 50 POSTS FOR ALL MEMBERS!*_

We will allow members with less than 50 posts but more than 25 posts to access the chat room, but it must be done on an approval basis. What this means is that you will have to request access to the chat room, and one of our Community Leaders or Chat Hosts must approve the request. Please note that our decisions in these matters are final, and we may not get to your request the moment you submit it. Members with less than 25 posts will not be granted access to the chat room. Members with over 50 posts will have automatic access to the chat room.

*In order to request chat access, you will need to go to your User CP. In the left hand column, you will see a tab labeled "Networking". Under this, you will see a link labeled "Group Memberships". Follow that link, and the instructions contained therein to request chat access. One of our CL's or CH's will review your request and either approve or deny it. If you're denied, you will be informed via PM. If you're approved, you should have chat access the next time you log in but the delay could be as long as an hour depending upon server load.*

Before we're bombarded with questions, this is NOT an automatic approval process. When we receive the request, we're going to go back and look at your posting history here. We want people who are active in the forums to be allowed chat, but do not want those who are quiet on the forums to be allowed into the chat room. So gone are the days of posting a bunch of "I agree" and "Thanks" type posts. 

To put it bluntly, if you want access to the chat then you need to become a productive member of the forums. After all, the chat room is supposed to augment the forums and not replace them.

The second half of our changes to the chat room are this: We're serious about enforcing the forum rules in the chat room. If you've accessed the chat room via the approval process and you commit a violation of our forum rules, you will lose your chat room access until you have achieved 50 posts.

As always, any questions about this policy can be directed towards any of our Community Leaders or Chat Hosts.


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## ffemt8978 (Oct 7, 2008)

As a reminder for all members


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## ffemt8978 (Nov 4, 2008)

In response to several requests from the membership, and the general improvement in chat room behavior, the Community Leaders have changed the chat access policy.

Effective immediately, although it may take up to 24 hours for everything to process through the system, the new policy will be:

0-25 posts - No chat access
25-50 posts - Chat access only with approval (same method as described in the first post of this thread).
50+ posts - automatic chat access.

As always, if you have any questions about this policy you may contact any of the Community Leaders or Chat Hosts.


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