How to open linked Chat about question manually?

Question

In a recent question, jonk and I had an extended discussion in the comments and we realized that this would be better suited to the chatroom feature. But we didn't know how to open such a room. To be specific, I am interested in a "linked" chatroom, that:

• is accessible via a link in comments of the specific question and
• which has a link to the question in the chatroom.

Eventually, a mod created this room, as happens for many questions. Is this possible without mod intervention? Indeed, n the recent question here in meta about a "Discussion Tab" for questions, several users suggested to use the chatroom feature instead.

But currently, I only know how to open generic chat rooms in the chat feature, which is a fatal flaw IMO. I have two reasons for using chat: 1) General EE talk is catered to by the main room, and 2) question specific talk which only really makes sense when linked to a question.

How to open linked question-specific chatrooms manually, i.e. without spamming the comments section until a mod opens a room?

Answer 1

As you've noted, you typically need either the system to prompt you to create the room or a moderator to create one for you.

The closest that a non-moderator can come to doing this manually (that I know of) is to:

1. Create a chat room with the correct site as the chat room parent. You can give the chat room a name which mimics the name automatically generated for system-linked chat rooms: "Discussion on [...]".
2. Link to the post in the chat room (e.g. as a chat message).
3. Comment on the post with a link to the chat room.

That's a lot of manual work (which is really unnecessary since the system is clearly capable of doing it for you) but it does satisfy your two bullet points.