Oliver
1
Of late, there has been some strife and anger going around the #wikihow
IRC channel. People are feeling that they are being disrespected by people who feel they are doing the right thing, and it’s a little bit of a mess. There have been plenty of suggestions floated around the channel, from just kicking more people to rewriting the IRC Governance Guidelines
. From the discussions already had, I think we all agree that the behavior in IRC has grown more immature than we would like it to be, and I’m wondering if people have ideas as to what could be done about it. I think that in order to get IRC to return to its respectful, collaborative environment, we would do well to point out the Guidelines (linked above) more often and have better standards among ops for what qualifies as warnable behavior and what merits a kick or a ban. Please, share opinions and solutions below.
Really?
I think our ops are doing a pretty good job of it. Do we really need more layers of policy/guidelines/whatever?
system
3
http://www.wikihow.com/wikiHow:Policy-Proposal/IRC-Governance2011
Working copy of a “short version” of the IRC governance ideas. We’re looking to condense the current (quite long) version into something readable and easily followed/used by IRC ops to maintain some semblance of consistency in the day to day operations. Feel free to add your ideas to the talk page.
system
4
This is just my thoughts upon the current draft. There was a small discussion in IRC earlier, but wasn’t avail to discuss with the participants. I seriously have more opinions, but this is just for now. “Try to use your wikiHow identity or related name as your IRC nickname whenever possible.” — I would LOVE this to happen with several ‘regulars’ as of now. I don’t care if it’s your real life name, use your wikiHow name. “Avoid evading or circumventing channel bans. Bans may be extended for evasion. To appeal a ban, email blocked@wikihow.com
.” — For one, I have alwaysextended bans for evasion and have never fell back on it. Secondly, blocked@wikihow.com
is accessed by Jack, Chris, etc. The ‘banned’ person can make up any fictitious story they want, especially if the email accesser hasn’t been in IRC for a long time. So what are we going to do about the ‘appealing’? “Be sure to explain your reasons for appealing the ban, as is done with on-site vandals.” — Because people may not have the entire or even parts of the ‘history’, like it’s (very) easy to access on the main site, explaining and reasoning probably should be avail. either with logs or double checking with someone that either has them or was actively there to verify. “If someone is offended by your behavior, stop.” — Smart (ass) mouths, depending who is ‘active’ in the channel get away with certain things, thinking that certain people don’t see what’s going on. Ganging up on someone because they don’t like profanity to be spoken in IRC is one of the top known things in this category. Just “because other people do it” or “because I can” is seriously going to make me slap someone. “Avoid writing to the channel several times in rapid succession, as this can be considered “flooding” the IRC room.” — Probably the only time of the year where I’ll sit back and enjoy “flooding” are New Years countdowns, which the regulars been doing in IRC for a few years actually, and none of us have been really seriously out of control with that. But yeah, outside of that “holiday”, this should be a practised standard rule nonetheless.
I’ve a hump with the 13 and under age limit… Can we do without it? I mean its not like we are on adult-only content, I suppose not all parents object to having their children on IRC.
Because asking someone “hey, what’s your wikiHow username” is that hard, isn’t it? It’s exactly like building a spaceship from carrots
, in fact.
system
7
On IRC, it’s not up to wikiHow. Freenode (the actual server)'s rules state that a person needs to be at least 13 to use their service. It doesn’t mean that a person can circumvent their rules even if they have parental permission to be on the site.
Lojjik
8
Actually Mal, the policy is that they can not register a nickname with NickServ due to COPPA. "[00:52:39] [MOTD] - By registering your nickname with Nickserv you agree that you [00:52:39] [MOTD] - are 13 years of age, or older. For more information about the [00:52:39] [MOTD] - Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act please see their [00:52:39] [MOTD] - website at ( http://www.coppa.org
). [00:52:39] [MOTD] - "
system
9
Well sorry. I knew “something” had to do with them and age.
Elyne
10
We had this discussion about a billion times before and I thought that more recently 2009-2010 went a lot smoother. But then again lately I’m not that active anymore on IRC so maybe I missed things. I think we should respect the guidelines ( i like it) but fight personal fights/drama in PM and keep it outside of IRC and if there is a problem contact an admin or someone outside of IRC who can help you. If you have problems with certain users /ignore <users> them or speak it out with them. Try at least to stay civil. And if you think they are starting to pick or fighting with you ignore it or if it becomes a problem contact someone ( admin within IRC or someone on the outside).
About profanity: I’m not perfect like the rest of the world and sometimes something does slip but I do try to keep it at bay around certain users who i know that they don’t like - (which btw I don’t have a problem with).Some people in IRC take easier offence of something than another person and I think we should remind ourself that and watch our words a bit.
Thats about what i have to say about it right now.</users>
One of the things we talked about is clearer guidelines for admins and I think that’s really important. I know personally it took me a while to adjust to freenode culture and policy which is different from that of wikiHow. I think it would be good to include some sort of IRC training in the admin welcome package (if we still send that) and give admins an opportunity to learn about IRC through some sort wikiHow University course. I don’t know if it’s worth more NVC training, but I also think there needs to be a discussion about how IRC disputes should be handled. One of the big problems I see is people who don’t know how to handle trolls and even for me it can be difficult, because there are times when it’s necessary that certain behavior isn’t welcome. At the same time, you don’t want to highlight certain behavior. Publicly telling people not to feed a troll publicly accuses someone of trolling, which at the very least gives a troll more of the attention they feed off of. Yet, it’s hard to go around telling people to ignore everyone. So, I think we need to brainstorm about ways to bring back the calm after some heated arguments and what to do when people refuse to limit their disputes to private messages, even after an admin has intervened. I would also recommend bringing back the mediation team, so people have a place to take their disputes and logs that’s off of #wikihow
and doesn’t add to the channel drama.
The mediation team is still active, all should feel free to use them. http://www.wikihow.com/wikiHow:Mediation-Team
Just my $0.02 worth. Avoid is vague. That means I can still do it I just shouldn’t do it much? “I tried to avoid a collision.” If we are trying to be “positive” then let’s just state the positive behavior and then say “don’t do this…” Use profanity with discretion. Hmmm. How do you define “discretion.” I guarantee that my discretion is much stricter than others. I have little tolerance for the F bomb. But I know there are those who use it in every sentence so restricting themselves to once every 2-3 minutes in IRC would be using it with discretion to them.
Caidoz
14
“Use profanity with discretion” means that, rather than some hard and fast rule no one will stick to, people are left to make their own judgement as to what is appropriate in a certain situation and act accordingly. This ties into point 1, if someone’s offended by the use of profanities, stop using them.
Or maybe add “Behave and talk as if your mom were in the room”?
Lojjik
16
Davecrosby, and some moms will be more lenient or strict than others… thus there still wouldn’t be a standard.
This could go both ways, my wikiHow realname is Jenna, but my username is Jennaxox18. Since “Jenna” was already registered on freenode, I used “Jenna-” My names are related somewhat, I just dislike the username I chose at the time I joined wikiHow. I think it should be fine to use whichever nickname you want, even though it is easier if you do use your username. But there are also people who use freenode, and don’t want to use their wikihow username in other channels, or maybe some actually have used freenode before, and registered their name. What is really bothersome is when someone changes their name a lot, or comes in repeatedly as WeblogVisitor and changes there name, and deny them being the same person when we can clearly see their IP.
I agree there has been a lot of arguments, ganging up on people, and immaturity/disrespect. I know that I have slipped up before, and if there is an argument in #wikihow
everyone is able to join in by just pressing the enter key. I think for some people (that aren’t necessarily trolls) they are unclear on why they are being kicked, or what they are doing, and they just don’t understand when we try to explain. But it would be nice for people to be a little more calm in the channel, and less fired up over trolls.
Christ. Well, then let’s say that some people don’t consider “fuck” and “shit” to be profanity (I’m sure there’s at least one person out there like that). What we should do, then, is enumerate absolutely every single word that’s considered profanity, ranked by offensiveness. In fact let’s get some kind of points system going on here, say, “bollocks” is one point, “shit” is three points, etc, and more than 10 points in an hour gets you a stern warning, and more than 20 gets you a kick, and more than 30 gets you a ban. ORwe could just ask people to, like, use their judgement
rather than trying to make policy so fine-grained that there’s absolutely no way that anyone can possibly misunderstand it.
system
19
So we had a huge blasting discussion in IRC last night about my first comment & agreed upon if a person decides to use a name totally differently than their wikiHow username (like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck on the site), then they should be encouraged to write it on their userpage alerting other people about it.
