Shortly after discovering FR in 1999, through a dear friend now departed, the forum changed totally and I gave up trying to understand the system.
After many years of visiting FR, I still don't understand it, but life is too short, and it ain't broke, so why fix it?
But I've got to ask. I make no conscious effort to visit "chat", whatever that is, and yet I am reading this thread; as well as many others that I know have nothing to do with "chat". How does that work?
I am able to read muslim threads, political threads, international threads, Iraq threads, humor threads, the FR Canteen, pretty much everything except (Thank God!) evolution-credo threads.
Is there a magic hidden page somewhere that explains all these secret Freeper idiosyncrasies?
When you go to your “main” FR page, the one where you can see what live posts are around, near the top right is a little area headed Browse by Forum.
In your list under that heading, you’ll probably see General/Chat (along with lots of other stuff). That means all G/C threads show up in your “main” page.
If you want to add or remove forums, click on More at the very top right, then “My Subscriptions.” You can check or uncheck which channels you want to show up in that little list, and in which order.