For discussion of almost anything of interest to participants, but especially culture, customs, language etc. in different countries.

The Worldchat forum in Yahoogroups replaces an earlier one in the FamilyNet BBS network, which in turn was derived from the INTERNAT conference on Fidonet, which linked mainly people in the UK, New Zealand and South Africa. In FamilyNet it was an international version of the OFF_TOPIC conference, which was for things that were off topic in other forums.

So it's really a group of friends who like to keep in touch with each other, but it's not a closed group, so others are welcome to join in, especially those who are invited by existing members.

There are few rules. The main one is "be friendly". That doesn't mean you have to be bland and uncontroversial, and you can disagree with opinions expressed, quite vehemently, as long as you attack opinions and not opinion holders. So we try to disagree without being disagreeable.