Chat: FAQ
Thanks to Sabrista and Bryn666, SABRE's two chat gurus, this FAQ should answer all your chat-related questions! Information on how to connect has its own page.

What is SABRE Chat?
SABRE Chat is run on an IRC server provided by AfterNet, and is free for all members of SABRE to use. Directions to get it working are shown below.

Who will be there and when?
Experience shows that the chat room is usually busiest from 9 pm to midnight any day of the week, although people may well be in at other times. There are no rules about starting a chat session - simply let people be aware of your presence in the chatroom and people will start to appear eventually. At least one of the chat moderators will normally be in the chat room at all times.

What can be discussed?
Officially, the chatroom is for roads discussion although venturing slightly off topic is perfectly acceptable, after all, it wouldn't be normal to just talk about roads and roads alone - especially if you're using the chatroom for the first time - introducing yourself, for example.

There's nothing to stop you talking about anything you like, however, a polite suggestion would be to keep extremely off-topic conversations to private messages or "whisper windows", although these only allow one-to-one conversation with another member in the chatroom.

Please do not stay logged in for long periods if you're not wanting to chat, as this is bad netiquette and can mislead people as to who is actually in the room.

Also bear in mind that you will only get out of chat as much as you are prepared to put into it. Please make an effort to actually chat with others in the room, and don't just look upon it as a form of entertainment where you can be a spectator.

How to I send a private message?
To start a private conversation with someone in another window in IRC, type /query {user} {text}, so for example if you wanted to talk to the user "john" privately you'd type /query john Hi John, how are you?. It's a little complex to get your head round, so if you need help please drop one of the chat moderators an e-mail, or talk to someone in the chatroom!

How do I connect/get started?
This information has its own page - see How to Connect.