IRC Issues [From Stepping Down]

[Miia Ranta]

2009/10/2 Michael Lustfield <mtecknology at ubuntu.com>:
[deletia]

{this email in short: we need human interaction with human enforced,
case-to-case based problem solving with rules that can live through
change and work for people with different background}

in all the years I've IRC'd, I've noticed a pattern in how IRC
channels are operated and perhaps more importantly, why they are
operated like they are. Let me explain.

While there are few obvious very precise rules that the breach of them
usually deserve a kick or even a ban, such as "no flooding", "no spam
links", "no unauthorised bots" and so on, some things are best left as
blanket rules such as "no excessive swearing" without going into
details what is swearing and what limits there are to it, or "no
system info, uptime or other useless scripts" without going into
details which scripts are allowed, "no shock pages" without going into
details which of them are forbidden, etc.

This is, when asked, usually for couple of reasons:
1) World evolves: There's no way of listing all curse words, shock
sites, scripts, discussion topics in a way that could be presented as
the rule of Gods of IRC. While most of them might be known, there is
always something new.

2) We are dealing with people as people: in #ubuntu and #kubuntu there
are the floodbots that combat the most common way of a bot attack. The
rest is left for people to handle, as the probability of false
positive decisions made by bots increases as we move to dealing with
people, who - as we know - are often irrational bunch and don't act in
patterns that could be detected by bots to a degree of certainty we
can live with.

3) Strict rules allow loopholes: strict rules of what is allowed and
what is not, people find loopholes which they use to circumvent the
spirit of the rules.

As for Ubuntu IRC channels, this is my personal observation and thoughts:
The kicks, bans and notices given by people to people are probably the
best way of handling this, as they need to be explained to receiver by
people who have issued them, and no bot can do this in a way that
would be on a level we (as the IRC op team, or I personally) can
approve. Ubuntu is "Linux for human beings" and governing the IRC, a
method of human communication, is something we can not delegate to a
overgrown piece of Python or TCL. We're dealing with people from
different cultures and backgrounds (as Paul said earlier) and need to
keep the human contact to things.

My .02€

Miia "Myrtti" Ranta
-- 
GCS/ED/FA/H/P/S/L/O d- s-:+ a29 C++ UL+ P+ L+++ E W+++ N+ o K+ w+(---)
!O M V? PS++ PE>$ Y+ PGP- t+ 5+++ X+ R tv- b+++ DI++++ D-- G e>+++ h-
r++ x?