Branching off this conversation into its own thread so we don't clutter an unrelated issue.
On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 9:33 AM, Owen Winkler <[email protected]> wrote: > > The IRC channel is of late typically not very respectful of visitors. > Mibbit has the ability to display some backlog, and there's no telling > what talk or links will appear in there even if people are civil when > obvious new Mibbit users show up. I think "not respectful" is perhaps not the best choice of words. The content may not be appropriate for all visitors, but it's not as if anyone has been rude to a visitor (at least not that I've seen, and I'm generally around a good part of the day). > <snip> > > This brings up the tangential issue of IRC conduct lately. > > I have absolutely no problem using the IRC channel as a social gathering > place, but regulars there need to keep in mind that users are told to > come to that channel for help. I simply can't imagine the image that > we're portraying to church website builders, serious business people, > and parents of web-savvy children who come to IRC for help on our > recommendation to do so. Some of the stuff going on there is outright > shameful. Particularly in the last couple of days we have had a rise in the number of links to pictures and similar content that I personally would not take an interest in or share, especially with strangers. Toning those down would be fine with me. On the other hand, I think it's important to recognize that obviously not everyone agrees with my definition of "appropriate" content (otherwise they wouldn't be sharing these links either), so we need to respect the opinions of others. > It's harrowing that people who supposedly have the authority to keep the > channel in check are often the ones responsible for the noise. Again, I think this comes down to the meritocracy concept and the idea that other people have differing views. Unless you're being verbally abusive or spamming, no one feels comfortable taking an authoritarian role and telling anyone something's unacceptable. Lately, the channel has become a festering link dump. I'm personally > sick of seeing tons of unsolicited links to whatever latest found > YouTube video looks "cool". At least one out of every three of the > recent round of "unexplained photos" links seemed inappropriate for the > channel. While I admit to appreciating some of these links for their > simple humor, I don't believe that they're always appropriate for the > kind of environment that would encourage tentative users to return. Agreed. While I don't think we should expect the channel to be 100% business, I think we may have passed that fine line lately. Encouraging everyone to filter themselves ever so slightly more than they have been in the past week or two would probably be a good thing. > One might say that the links don't hurt anyone; that nobody complains. > I have been off IRC lately for the past couple of days, specifically > because the signal/noise ratio has dropped below my willingness to > filter it. But more importantly, when I did return last night, I > received more than one complaint via private message about the > appropriateness of some of the content in the channel. No one has complained in the channel. I would encourage anyone who does have a problem to speak up rather than bottle it up or funnel it to you. Like I said, it's meritocracy. There is no final authority and no one should expect you to take on that role. If there's a problem, speak up. I seriously doubt anyone would be anything but receptive, particularly about this kind of thing. At the same time it's not necessarily the channel's fault if you no longer find it valuable enough to hang around. We'd love to have you around again, but if that means killing off the community atmosphere by requiring that only Habari ever be discussed I don't think it's a good trade. > I would like to see some steps taken to correct this. I think that IRC > has been a great resource for the project and a great way for > participants to communicate both about it and informally to build online > friendships within our project, and I would like to continue to use it > that way. It might be useful to write out a loose code of conduct so > that there are some boundaries for what is acceptable. We have a bunch > of new channel ops -- It should be easier for them to point at some > "rules" when someone is being abusive or puerile. As usual, I don't think rules or policies are what we need. With the number of differing opinions and viewpoints we have I don't think we could ever reasonably expect to come up with any substantial list we could all agree on. We're all adults, we should be able to tell for ourselves what's over the top for our relaxed IRC environment. At the same time I think it's the responsibility of everyone else to help point out things that they don't deem as appropriate. IRC should be fun. I don't think we've ever seriously gotten in the way of shop talk, but that doesn't mean we don't need to tone down some of the more risque content that's been increasingly popular lately. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/habari-dev -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
