Chris Meller wrote: > > 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.
The reason I was approached was only because I op'ed up for a moment. I think it's a reasonable expectation for passing visitors to the channel that operators keep the piece. Since we don't all go around with operator status turned on it's hard to know who is one. I think I just opened the door for the pm in this case. Even if we did keep the op mode on all the time, there are a few operators that I feel are not themselves setting an appropriate tone for the channel. The idea that we're all adults frequently doesn't apply to the people who would abuse the channel. In the past I've seen people who've been told to tone it down, whether by another user or an operator, take to aiming their abuse at the person issuing the warning. Announcing your displeasure in the public channel is often a great way to have all of the abusers turn their attention your way. I can completely understand wanting to take these concerns to an operator directly. Anyway, they told me, and I'm telling you all now. :) > 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. As far as my visitation is concerned, it's mostly a matter of getting other things done versus visiting 50 links to pictures with fat guys in thongs. I don't have the time for that nonsense, so I just turned it off. I'm not suggesting we take the fun out of the channel. (And I'm especially not suggesting that anyone ever do anything exclusively for my benefit.) Things in the past have been active, helpful, and entertaining in correct proportions. But in the past few weeks, it's been more irrelevant junk than usual. Maybe this thread is enough to push everyone back in line, but it seems pointless to revive this thread again in 6 months because we've failed to document on the wiki's IRC page a simple intent for our use of the channel. > > 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. If we're all adults, then we should be similarly able to collaborate on some loose guidelines of the caliber of behavior one would expect of others while in the channel. It's exactly because not everyone agrees on their own that some consensus should be reached. Besides that, not having any guidelines leaves open too many questions. First, there is no documentation for non-PMC/non-operator users on the limits of what will be tolerated. This would establish a baseline of expectation for visiting users for their own behavior and what they should expect to be enforced by the channel ops to keep others civil. Without this, visitors wouldn't know if (for example) profanity is allowed, and one operator might welcome it, while another might kick you for it. Establishing the guideline benefits visitors in this case, since a more uniform application of "over the top" would be enforced. Thinking about it now, for a lack of these guidelines, anyone who is unsatisfied with how IRC currently is really has no ground to complain from, since we've not given them a baseline expectation other than what they experience in IRC itself. They may have expected no links to NSFW items, and no profanity, and no sexual innuendo at their expense, but in reality that could be exactly what #habari is about. Who knows? Second, it would provide at least some partial guidelines to operators who would otherwise be uncomfortable taking the steps to keep others in line. There would be no surprise when a user gets a warning or is kicked because he steps clearly outside of those guidelines, because that's what the guidelines would recommend for them to do. Third, it would offer some protection from abuse for the operators that choose to help keep the peace. I have personally not warned users about their questionable behavior only because I didn't want to have to put up with cries similar to "Where does it say I can't post Goatse photo URLs in here?" With guidelines, you would at least be able to say, "It's implied, HERE." I'm not saying that we need to list out each explicit offense, but it would at least be useful to describe the general tone for the room, explain why we desire civility, and set the expectation for visitors that they're not going to see Goatse and that anyone who posts it will be dealt with somehow (just as a specific example of a more general policy). > 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. IRC should be fun, but as an extension of the Habari brand - a live group of voices associated to the name - it needs to be more civil than it has been lately. There are people (besides me) trying to build business on this brand, which is harder if the brand is represented poorly in public. We should all be more aware of our online reputations in general. Owen --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
