Main Rooms Policy

First, KGS is a family-aimed server. The main chat rooms should be appropriate for people of any age from any culture. This mean no swear words, no sex related conversations, references to illegal drugs, etc(see the current Terms of Service).
Second, the primary purpose of the main chat rooms are to help users with go and KGS.
Any discussion unrelated to either go or KGS will be tolerated only if it doesn't interfere with this aim and the first point.
If questions from users are (or would be) flooded in such a conversation, then the conversation should either stop or move to another room.
"Off-topic" discussions, while often tolerated, are not the purpose of the main rooms.
Discussions of a religious or political nature can quickly become heated and disruptive, so are not allowed in the main rooms.
Note: Long discussions in a language other than the room's default language should move to the main room dedicated to that language. This does not apply to conversations with lost newbies.
The admins enforce the main room policy and the TOS. They can terminate a user's connection without warning and they can ban them from KGS. Newbies asking questions are treated more leniently than regular users.

Game Kibitz Policy

• Same as above but replace "help users" with "commenting on the game" and "questions from users" with "comments on the game".
• Note: All languages are welcome in game kibitz.

Game Chat Policy

• The "family-aimed" policy described in the first item of the Main Rooms Policy above applies to all public games.
  
• The "family-aimed" policy applies to players and observers.
  
• Chat by observers of games in progress should be restricted to discussion of that particular game.
  
• The more observers in a game, the more likely it is an admin will enforce this.
  
• Please remember that many observers hope to learn by watching a game, and by watching and possibly participating in the game chat. Off-topic discussion in game chat makes it harder for them to do that.
  
• Note: All languages are welcome in game chat

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Observing a game on KGS can be almost as much fun as playing one yourself (and less of a commitment, if you are liable to be called away from your computer). KGS has many features to help with observing games. It is easy to observe games: in the main window, you just click on one or more of the games listed.

Some games are private. You cannot watch one of these, unless you are invited to join it.

You can chat while observing a game, but, try to keep your comments related to the game. In rated and free games, the players can not see your comments. However, in a Teaching game (indicated by a T to the left of the game in the main window) the teacher and pupil can see your remarks, so you should avoid chatting without their permission.