[Foundation-l] Proposed guidelines in our IRC channels

[Sean Whitton]

Greetings,

As some are aware, I recently started up #wikimedia-ops as an attempt
to organise op activity across the network. I think what we have going
works - although so far there have been few issues that have needed
the co-ordination (that I've seen, anyway), the idea is there and the
opportunity for help is being advertised. IRC is a powerful resource
that as an organisation we use well, but there is room for
improvement.

When someone is kicked rem'med from a channel, there are usually
arguments between the op and the user or publically in the channel
over the validity of their removal. It was recently pointed out to me
by a fellow freenode staffer that 'you can't keep chasing an unwritten
[guideline]', and I decided to start an initiative to write one.
Obviously, this will be a community effort, and so I created a page
over on meta at [[m:IRC guidelines]], which I invite you to
participate in. At the time of writing there isn't anything real
there, but I invite people to build it up.

For the moment, I have no idea how enforcable/!official these
guidelines are going to be. I suggest that we worry about that after
we actually have some, because the channel operations structure is too
ad hoc to make assumptions on how it will work. This is just an idea,
something that I hope people will adopt.

There are several pages on the freenode website which may be of
interest. WP:NPA, WP:CIVIL and a few others may also be of use.
http://freenode.net/philosophy.shtml
http://freenode.net/freenode_and_irc.shtml
http://freenode.net/catalysts.shtml
http://freenode.net/channel_guidelines.shtml

I look forward to receiving comments on this through this list, IRC
(#wikimedia-irc/#wikimedia-ops) or the talkpage of the guidelines
page. Let's try and develop some rough standards to improve the IRC
experience. Thank you for your time.

S

-- 
	—Xyrael / Sean Whitton ~ Knowledge is power, but only wisdom is liberty
		sean at silentflame.com | xyrael.net