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I run Moonwards, a website working to develop a virtual Moon colony that is technically and scientifically realistic. It is a small site so far, and I am actively seeking collaboration. It has a forum but not a chat room, and it occurred to me the most effective place to put the chat room would be in the chat area of SX. All current contributors are active here on SX, and there would be a natural synergy between the two places as they attract a very similar audience.

This project is not for profit and open source, all contents are under an MIT license. It is definitely on topic for SX, but it isn't about SX. Is that allowed?

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  • $\begingroup$ @MolbOrg what isn't working? $\endgroup$ – kim holder Mar 7 '16 at 4:53
  • $\begingroup$ Page is not opening, because your host is not accessible from my network. From my side it looks like problems between zayo network and your hoster network, route forgotten or something like that (not necessary so). Your hoster may know if asked. I opened it trough anonymouse, nice site. $\endgroup$ – MolbOrg Mar 7 '16 at 7:28
  • $\begingroup$ @MolbOrg Thanks for alerting me. :) I'll ask my hosting service about it. $\endgroup$ – kim holder Mar 7 '16 at 14:45
  • $\begingroup$ @MolbOrg They got back to me and asked if you could run a traceroute on it. You could email me the results through moonwards, my address there is kim (at) that website. Forgive me not typing it correctly in order to avoid webcrawlers that log addresses. Thanks again! $\endgroup$ – kim holder Mar 7 '16 at 23:59
  • $\begingroup$ @MolbOrg i know you already did that, so presumably they'd like to see if they fixed it. Or maybe there is some little bit missing. $\endgroup$ – kim holder Mar 8 '16 at 0:08
  • $\begingroup$ it works now, nice $\endgroup$ – MolbOrg Mar 8 '16 at 0:15
  • $\begingroup$ I don't see Moonwards at the moment. i.stack.imgur.com/2mOwe.png I was going to ask you if you'd tried any algae yet after seeing this: youtu.be/hn6WtZ0b4H8 Has the room, or your project "gone dark"? $\endgroup$ – uhoh Jul 27 '18 at 6:21
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    $\begingroup$ @uhoh - I allowed the room to freeze, for now. I have a deadline of the end of the year to have the virtual colony 'open'. Though that is months from now, i have pulled back from many activities in order to focus on getting that done. The design of the colony is also 'frozen' until after the opening. It turns out one can research lunar colony design endlessly, I had to get my nose out of the books in order to get the project realized. There is an algae facility included, but it's only a preliminary design. Once the app is online, i'll ask that the room be unfrozen. $\endgroup$ – kim holder Jul 27 '18 at 14:05
  • $\begingroup$ Got it! I'll check out ur site soon to see what's up, thanks for the update! $\endgroup$ – uhoh Jul 27 '18 at 16:44
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    $\begingroup$ @uhoh um, the website isn't up to date either, really. I'm the only person working on this at the moment, and i'm not a multi-tasker. I'm not tweeting, posting, blogging, reading, or networking. I'm just building. You might find the asset catalogue interesting, that's the last change i made to the website before going full build mode. moonwards.com/project.html#assets $\endgroup$ – kim holder Jul 27 '18 at 16:49
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If, as you put it, there would be a natural synergy between the two places, then absolutely, go for it. Stack Exchange network officially declares chat as the "third place":

The third place is a term used in the concept of community building to refer to social surroundings separate from the two usual social environments of home and the workplace. In his influential book The Great Good Place, Ray Oldenburg argues that third places are important for civil society, democracy, civic engagement, and establishing feelings of a sense of place.

Most needed are those ‘third places’ which lend a public balance to the increased privatization of home life. Third places are nothing more than informal public gathering places. The phrase ‘third places’ derives from considering our homes to be the ‘first’ places in our lives, and our work places the ‘second.’

And gives a bit more guidance in Help Center > Privileges > create chat rooms:

What are chat rooms?

Each chat room defines a specific topic; the conversation in that room is expected to loosely follow the topic. Chat typically has a few established rooms for common topics.

When should I create a new chat room?

When you find yourself wanting to have an extended conversation about a topic that is not covered by one of the existing chat rooms, you should create a new room for it.

How do I create a new chat room?

There is a link to chat in the footer of every page. The link also appears in the Stack Exchange site switcher on the upper left corner of every page. Click one of those links, and then click the "create a new room" button at the bottom of the Rooms page.

...

There is nothing in your proposed use of a new chat room that goes against these guidelines, and as there's active participants of both the Space Exploration Stack Exchange community as well as of your Moonwards project, I entirely endorse your request. Mind, this is an opinion and not in official capacity, but for the better of me, I don't see why not and as someone that has been actively working on community building, it is the type of activity I would like to see here more often.

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