The Chat Forum is a page where organisers and participants of a competition can write messages to socialise and connect with each other during the competition.

The Chat Forum differs from the Announcements channel, which allows organisers to deliver competition-specific information to participants. The Chat Forum also differs from Challenge Chats, as the Chat Forum allows for communication across teams (and to event organisers), whereas Challenge Chats allow communication within a team.

To navigate to a competition's Chat Forum, simply click the Chat Forum tab.

Once you're on the Chat Forum page within a competition, you'll be able to see all messages posted by competition organisers and participants. For each message, you'll be able to see the name/alias [1] of the poster, a badge [2] (if applicable) next to their name, and the time and date [3] that the message was posted.

Organisers will have an 'Event Organiser' badge next to their name. In team-based competitions, participants will have a badge showing their team name and avatar. In individual-based competitions, participants will not have a badge next to their name.

You will be able to see the name of event organisers who post. For participants however, you will see their user alias instead.

To post a message in the Chat Forum, simply type in the message input box. Each message has a limit of 500 characters.

You can also paste images into the message input box if you wish. Image file types that are accepted are JPEG, JPG, PNG, and GIF. Note that only one image can be added to a message at a time.

When you are ready to post your message, click 'Send'.

Messages that are posted in the Chat Forum are visible to everyone with access to the competition (event organisers and participants). You cannot choose a specific user or group of users to message.

You can edit any of your own messages in the Chat Forum. To edit a message, click the pen icon underneath the message you wish to edit. Once you do this, you will be able to freely edit the message.

The same rules for posting new messages apply to editing existing messages. Each message has a maximum character limit of 500 characters, and you can add one image at a time to each message (with only JPEG, JPG, PNG, and GIF image file formats being accepted).

Once you are happy with the edits you have made, click the tick icon [1] to save your changes. Once you do this, '(edited)' will be added to the end of your message to show that your message has been edited.

If you want to discard your edits, click the cross icon [2] to cancel editing.

As an event organiser, you can delete any messages that any user has posted. To do this, simply click the bin icon underneath the message you wish to delete.

The ability to delete messages allows you as an event organiser to moderate the Chat Forum, and delete messages with inappropriate content, and/or messages which promote cheating and/or collaboration across teams and participants.

Note that once you delete a message, it will become inaccessible to all users in the competition and cannot be recovered.