I read through a few days of transcripts and thought about this issue a bit. It seems to me that there is much confusion about some basic chat room governance issues, the clarification of which (from On High?) would probably help move this question towards resolution.

I'll list a few fundamental questions. 

 - Is there an overall set of rules/guidelines for all chat rooms? 
- If yes, where is it? *EDIT: oops, found the [FAQ][1]. And it does say we all have to [be nice][2]. But beyond that, it seems to be a howto.* 
 - Do chat rooms associated with specific SE sites have the same rules/FAQ/standards as their "parent" sites? (EG: should everyone in The Comms Room follow all rules listed in the [SF FAQ][3]?)
 - Can/should chat rooms create their own local rules/FAQ/standards?
- If yes, what process should they use for this?
- What if a certain "local" chat room wants to allow behaviors discouraged in the "national" Stack Exchange standards? EG: suppose the "all chat rooms" FAQ said 'no rudeness', but the regulars in a specific chat room wanted to have their own 'rude & crude' culture?

In other words, maybe there needs to be a FAQ for all chat rooms, and then maybe each specific chat room needs a FAQ to explain its local culture? I looked for this kind of thing and failed to find it. In the absence of such things, people seem to be choosing and defending their own *unspoken* answers to these questions. And that seems to be creating conflict - some of the hardest disagreements to resolve are those which arise from unspoken assumptions.


  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/faq
  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/faq#nice
  [3]: http://serverfault.com/faq