IRC Guidelines

[Michael Lustfield]

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I was looking at the IRC Guidelines wiki [1]. I noticed a few changes
that I think should take place. Most of these are very trivial but add
to an easier read. Some of these points may need some deeper discussion
but I really feel some extra pieces need to be added. These sections
are to guide both ops and users and to help draw a firmer line that I
feel is being broken. - Please note that these are my suggestions and
I'm not trying to imply anything else other than what I'm clearly
stating.


I also think a section should be added about specifics of language.
I've seen many removals happen when they shouldn't and many removals
not happen when they should for language. A clear line really needs to
be drawn. I'm not saying we need every bad word listed.

What I'm saying amounts to something like this. "Swearing is NEVER
acceptable in the Ubuntu domain. Using it will result in a kick or ban,
usually coming after a warning. However, slang is acceptable provided
it is not in excessive use. Nobody wants to hear 'dang, [what surprised
you]' on every line."

The word "hell" should also be clearing defined. My personal stance is
that the word is not ok to use. It is swearing unless you are using it
in a religious sense. However, if this is the case, then it goes
against the religion part of o4o. In some countries the word is only
swearing, but then again, we're back to swearing.

Section: Preamble

"channel do lots of work" 'lots' should be 'a lot'

"because they adhere" 'they' should be 'the users' because this is in a
new paragraph and not directly implied.

"especially since the" s/since/because/

"Please also be aware" s/also//

Section: Don't flood the channel

"use the pastebin" s/the//
Section: Bot abuse 

"or calling lots of triggers" s/lots/many/

Section: Don't abuse the !ops trigger

"channel abuse (flooding, trolling etc...)." There should only be one
dot after "etc" because of the meaning of etcetera which is "and so on".
There should also be a comma after trolling. I believe the period after
the parenthesis should come before and not after.

"If you do it repeatedly, you may be removed." I think this should be
revised because unless the user is very new, inappropriate use of this
usually results in a removal the first time.

This may be a better option? "Abusing this trigger for other things will
result in removal from the channel."


Section: Here are several common questions [...]

Change "Cursing and swearing will not help, so please don't do that."
to "Cursing and swearing will not help; please use respectful language."

"welcome to join the operators channel" You may want to add what the
operators channel is within this paragraph rather than implying it in
the next. You may also want to add a note about this being an ops only
channel excluding issues.

It may be a good idea to add the -irc channel as well.

After the final section, there should probably be some added white
space before the following paragraphs to ensure separation. I initially
thought this was part of the same section.


I hope these suggestions are taken in the same manner I write them and
that many of you feel the same. Perhaps I didn't catch everything or
correct it the best. I just read the whole thing and pointed out the
parts that didn't flow and mentioned part I think should be added. :)

[1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/IrcGuidelines

- -- 
Michael Lustfield
Kalliki, SD LoCo
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