Chat is the private half of a community. The feed is people talking to everyone; chat is people talking to each other.
It is on by default. If you do not want members messaging each other, switch it off in the chat system tab of your community settings.
The switch
One switch controls the whole thing. While it is on, members can start a conversation with any other member they can see.
Two settings come with it.
- Group chats: whether every member may create one, or only your team.
- Allowed media types: images, videos, audio and files.
Group chats: who may create them
The narrower setting is the safer starting point. Group chats that anybody can create tend to multiply, and a member added to five groups they did not ask for turns notifications off entirely.
Letting only your team create them keeps groups intentional: a cohort, a project, a live round.
You can widen this later. Narrowing it once members have made twenty groups is the awkward direction.
Media in messages
The media types you allow in chat are separate from the ones you allow in posts.
A community that shares work in progress needs images. A community talking about schedules does not need video, and switching it off saves storage and the awkward conversation about what was uploaded.
What chat is not
It is not a support inbox. Messages between members are between members, and your team has no view of every conversation.
Reports are the exception. When a member reports a conversation, your team can read that whole thread in the moderation queue.
If you want members to reach you, give them a forum for it, or a channel outside the community entirely.
Moderation
Chat messages can be reported like any other content, and reports land in the same moderation queue with the reason attached. From there a message can be deleted, or the reports dismissed.
Moderation: requests and reports
The rest of the answer is at the member level: someone who is a problem in chat is usually a problem elsewhere, and deactivating or banning the account closes every door at once.
Whether to leave it on
Chat suits a community where members have reasons to talk privately: cohorts, mastermind groups, anything with pairs or teams.
It suits a large open community less. Conversations that would have been useful in a forum, where the next person could find them, move into private threads where they are lost. A quiet feed and busy chat is usually a sign the feed needed the attention.
You can switch it off at any time. Members lose access to their conversations, so it is better decided once than toggled.