IRC Council, Appeal resolution

[Jan Vancura]

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Recently, I've witnessed decisions by Ubuntu IRC operators that were
only ambiguously agreed to. What i mean is that some people have voiced
concerns over their fairness.

The IRC team has #ubuntu-ops, which serves many purposes, among them
being an instance of appeal for users who believe they are unjustly
banned/muted. It is, however, ill suited for this purpose, as the same
operator that has banned them whereever will most probably not want to
hear whining about his own ban, and quicken the process by issuing
another ban in -ops as well.

*This is common practice.*

The IRC council comprises of 3 senior IRC operators. I fear these
operators do not have the time, nor patience to respond to appeals. They
are also very jaded, and tend to dismiss cases according to their
precents (similar cases they have experienced), which is, however, not
easy to understand for the persons in question.

The ubuntuforums.org has resolution center where those wronged by
moderators can write about their case. The public review of this by
other mods and admins results in either reverting or confirming the
decisions taken. Users should and often are informed about this option.
The guidelines state it as well, and are easily located by anyone.
Higher instances of appeal are the Forums council, although it's
currently made up solely of forums staff, and the Community Council
(which has a special, confidential, mailing list for this).

Freenode often informs the people in question that they can email
staff at freenode.net and the senior staff can then review the actions of
other staff. There is no higher appeal.

The IRC team has no comparable institution, and guidelines are not
easily reachable or linked to.

I propose a confidential mailing list to be set up for the IRC council,
and users encouraged to email their complaints (possibly including
relevant logs) either to this, the public list, or the confidential one.

Thank you, and excuse my rant :)

I acknowledge that the life of an IRC operator is tough, and it's hard
to handle cases individually.

- --
Jenda Vančura <jenda at ubuntu.com>
GnuPG: 519D056A
Jabber me at jendavancura at gmail.com
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