Monitored chat

If you're looking for family-oriented chat, or chat that is more likely to be rated PG than rated R or X, you should look for a monitored chat. It's impossible for any chat service to watch all the chat in every chat room all the time. But chat services that have chat guides or chat hosts who help monitor chat are likely to have guidelines that support your desire to participate in friendly, clean chat. Monitored chat can't guarantee you won't bump up against some conversation that offends you, but at the folks being offensive know they're breaking the rules. They will likely try to keep a low profile, and guides or hosts should be able to take care of such a situation. Another advantage of monitored chat is that these chat services tend to have strict guidelines about malicious programming (often referred to as "bots"). Bots can be extremely troublesome – they can boot chatters, lag the room, disrupt games, and do all sorts of nasty things to disrupt your chat experience. Monitored chats, especially subscription-based chat services, are not very appealing targets for chatters who use bots, since they are likely to lose their accounts if they engage in this kind of behavior.