IRC Council, Appeal resolution

[Hobbsee]

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Hey all!

On seeing this email, i'm finally motivated to write of the things that
are bugging me in -ops.

Why are we running a private channel, and asking people to leave as soon
as they're done?  That does nothing for op-hopers' wanting to learn, and
it doesnt give us logs that are absolutely sure to be untainted (unlike
other channels, who have ubuntulog)

Do we really have anything to hide?  The most private things I've seen
discussed in there are user's IP's - and you can get them easily enough
with whois/whowas/other freenode commands.

But I think this has a larger problem - why arent we as an op team
trying to be transparent, like the rest of the ubuntu community is?  How
can we expect the trust of users, that we'll all do the right thing, if
they cant see it?  And if all they can see is feedback from people who
were banned from -ops at whinging about their bans?

I know the arguments - i've been in the op team for a long while -
kickbans can be issued very quickly, depending on the level of patience
of people.

However, we've also become very cliche'd as a team.  Even the guys like
Hawkwind, Somerville (sorry, lost your alias) have trouble fitting in,
as they're newer ops, and they've never really been in the "in" op
crowd.  For an Ubuntu community, this is unacceptable.

We've gotten to the point where if Seveas doesnt like it, then it doesnt
happen.  What will happen if and when Seveas steps down from his role?
How does the community scale if there are way more user channels, and
dev channels, a few years into the future?  Is Seveas expected to
control all that, unpaid, on his limited schedule?  (due to work, etc,
we cant expect him to live on irc).  Of course not.

I think we do need some sort of resolution place - there's nowhere to
say "hey, i had a few too many beers and screwed up, can you unban me?"
 - our bans dont automatically die - they only seem to when freenode
breaks badly enough, or someone asks for unbanning.

Basically - our model is working relatively well now, but how well will
it scale in the next few years as the userbase gets bigger, and
presumably the number of infractions gets larger?

Sarah Hobbs.

(aka. Hobbsee)

Jan Vancura wrote:
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