This page was created for discussion, and ultimately a solid set of guidelines for behavior in our IRC channel. The main problem is that, as the team grows, the maturity level seems to have dropped, and chatter gets off topic, unprofessional, and distracting to other members trying to be on topic.

Please remember that although this team's primary purpose is helping users, #ubuntuforums-beginners exists for us to stay organized and communicate effectively, NOT for helping other users. This is why we created ##beginners-help.

Everyday Policies

• Keep your existing IRC nick - don't fiddle around with your name or imitate others.

• No bots ever! (except VoteBot, ChanServ, and ubot3)

• Not a major support area (not that you can't ask about something, but don't get carried away)
  • Support should be directed to #ubuntu or ##beginners-help
• Keep in mind that although the channel is relaxed, keep in mind the primary focus should be team issues - be mature and stay on topic

Meeting Policies

PLEASE COME TO THE MEETINGS PREPARED.

This means:

1. If there is an issue for the team, add it to the agenda.
2. Agenda items then should be discussed "informally" on #ubuntufourms-beginners. 90 % of the discussion should have taken place before the meeting. The channel should be enjoyable for everyone, but keep in mind the purpose of the channel is to discuss team functions.
3. Ideally, meetings then are for decision making, team votes. Read the agenda and discuss your thoughts before the meeting. 10 % (or less) of the discussion should happen during the meeting.
4. Agenda items that require more then 5 minutes of discussion may need to be deferred.

The following are geared toward limiting misc. chatter in the channel during a meeting, and keeping the team focused, on topic, and progressing with the discussion at hand. These are in addition to the Everyday Policies.

• Please don't say "hello" or "goodbye" to people
• Don't put out random smiley faces
• Think through what you are going to say before you say it - keep your ideas together, not spread out over multiple lines. This makes it much easier to follow your line of thought.

• Set VoteBot to have a Meeting Mode where it PMs people who join the channel, telling them that a meeting is in progress and they need to be quiet.

• Set VoteBot to do all votes privately - this makes for privacy in votes as well as saves the spamming of votes in the channel.

• "Raise your hand" when you want to speak, and you will be called upon by the member leading the discussion.

Discussion

PLEASE add to discussion about the above points, expand on them, bash them, etc. This page is open for any and all discussion. DO NOT delete anything from the list above, only comment on it, and feel free to ADD to the list. Please include your name when making comments.

• Rocket2DMn: I don't think we want to use the "raise hands" method during meetings, as we will never make progress in decent time with this.
• Hellow: I agree with Rocket, it would get us next to nowhere in alot of time and it will add spam to the chat

• BodhiZazen: How about "raise your hand" if you feel the topic of discussion needs to be changed ? Along with that, keep silent until acknowledged/allowed to change topic, don't interject your new topic until acknowledged / recognized.

CategoryBeginnersTeam