One problem with vulgarity in chat is that the rules that officially apply, the no profanity standard of the SE network, aren't actually enforced. A lot of profanity is tolerated in chat, but if someone flags it, it is possible that it'll get removed. There is a disconnect between the official rules and the actually enforced rules, and that results in almost random decisions as every moderator or user handles those flags according to their own view.

A certain amount of cursing is tolerated in many rooms, among them also the moderator-only Teacher's Lounge. I don't think this is a problem, and I think this roughly mirrors the real world where the same language would also be often acceptable in some less formal, but not entirely private situations.

Having a tool to deal with inappropriate language that doesn't also suspend the user would be useful as well. It just escalates the situation and pisses off the users when they're suspended for misjudging the language a bit.

I personally find the profanity part to be a huge distractions from the actual issues of chat. So I would like for the official rules to be adjusted to the reality of chat to remove this distraction, while still not allowing just anything in chat.

I also don't think you can separate the social problems in chat from the technical issues. The flag system tend to escalate the drama in chat by drawing a lot of attention to each minor issue. Simply fixing this part might help with all the other issues as well. Flags are seen by many users as mostly misused, a validated flag isn't seen as confirmation that a message was problematic, but as the action of some trigger-happy outsiders.

Another issue is that chat moderation can be much harder than moderating the main site. It's in real time, you can't just take all the time you want to read up on the history of an event. There is also pretty much no guidance at all from SE on how to use the various chat moderation tools. I personally strongly dislike using the room timeout, but many other moderators use it as the first tool. Suspensions are mostly trivial, and rarely used outside of serious offenses.

One problem with vulgarity in chat is that the rules that officially apply, the no profanity standard of the SE network, aren't actually enforced. A lot of profanity is tolerated in chat, but if someone flags it, it is possible that it'll get removed. There is a disconnect between the official rules and the actually enforced rules, and that results in almost random decisions as every moderator or user handles those flags according to their own view.

A certain amount of cursing is tolerated in many rooms, among them also the moderator-only Teacher's Lounge. I don't think this is a problem, and I think this roughly mirrors the real world where the same language would also be often acceptable in some less formal, but not entirely private situations.

Having a tool to deal with inappropriate language that doesn't also suspend the user would be useful as well. It just escalates the situation and pisses off the users when they're suspended for misjudging the language a bit.

I personally find the profanity part to be a huge distractions from the actual issues of chat. So I would like for the official rules to be adjusted to the reality of chat to remove this distraction, while still not allowing just anything in chat.

I also don't think you can separate the social problems in chat from the technical issues. The flag system tend to escalate the drama in chat by drawing a lot of attention to each minor issue. Simply fixing this part might help with all the other issues as well. Flags are seen by many users as mostly misused, a validated flag isn't seen as confirmation that a message was problematic, but as the action of some trigger-happy outsiders.

Another issue is that chat moderation can be much harder than moderating the main site. It's in real time, you can't just take all the time you want to read up on the history of an event. There is also pretty much no guidance at all from SE on how to use the various chat moderation tools. I personally strongly dislike using the room timeout, but many other moderators use it as the first tool. Suspensions are mostly trivial, and rarely used outside of serious offenses.