Hi all, Because we've had a bit of a void with lacking guidelines for our IRC channel and it's growing quite big in size, I've set up the following page:
http://wiki.merproject.org/wiki/IRC_guidelines , based on the old MeeGo guidelines in order to help facilitate a proper process for violations and establish communication guidelines. This comes after I've had to do my first IRC channel ban in quite a while due to troubling behavior and it's best to set up a proper process before another time comes. The key thing in this document is to ask smart questions in order to get the optimal answers and answers experience. I can recommend reading, as linked in the IRC guidelines, http://catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html - the point is to do a bit of homework before asking questions and you're much more likely to get good answers when having done that. But at same time not to be shy to ask - we're happy to help. Another thing is that we are genuinely trying to build a happy, friendly, open community where people, no matter their affiliation with projects or companies can work together in a welcoming and collaborative atmosphere on common topics. Some might see me and others trying to welcome every newcomer on IRC, discussing their needs and helping with immediate questions and that's part of this. I've seen active and great communities destroyed by 'poisonous people' in my many years in open source and these guidelines try to help avoid these problems - I don't want this to happen to Mer too. There was a great talk some years ago about this problem: http://blogs.oreilly.com/conferences/2006/07/oscon-how-open-source-projects.html which I can recommend everybody to read/watch and understand. Comments? Questions? Changes to guidelines needed? Mailing list + advisory board agenda item for appeal sane? BR Carsten Munk Mer project architect
