Guidelines for the #ubuntu-meta IRC channel

Only pose questions in #ubuntu-meta that other people have posed in other channels. Never ask your own questions, because #ubuntu-meta is not a direct support channel. There is #ubuntu for that. This rule will be enforced strictly.

#ubuntu-meta is a channel for commenting on questions (difficult questions, questions that remain unanswered, etc.) that are asked in Ubuntu support channels such as #ubuntu, and consulting on such questions with people who are willing to offer this kind of "indirect" support.

If a question is asked in a support channel, and you are not able to answer it, but you believe somebody who is in #ubuntu-meta can, you can give them a line there.

Feel also free to relay other users' questions without addressing them to anyone specifically; just make sure that you have all the vital information about the question, so that you can write it down concisely, and in a manner that is effective for helpers to parse.

You should NOT ask support questions in #ubuntu-meta.

You should NOT message someone (publicly or privately) just because you see them poked by someone else in #ubuntu-meta about a certain question.

This channel is not for general chatter, please use #ubuntu-offtopic for that and keep this channel as scroll-free as possible! Don't bring in people with support questions!

The MetaBot

MetaBot watches the main support channels for unanswered messages (messages that do not get an answer, addressed to the original nickname, within four minutes), trying to discern questions from other stuff. Unanswered questions are shown in #ubuntu-meta.

Additionally, MetaBot tries to assign a category to each question. This, and the question/non-question decision, is controlled by a Bayesian filter.

You can train MetaBot by assigning questions to the most appropriate category (or by marking them as "null", i.e. non-questions). Type « help » in a private message with MetaBot to know the syntax for doing this. Please try to assign questions to existing categories (type « categories »); if a question does not fit, you can discuss with the channel operators whether creating a new category is appropriate.

If the in-channel messages from MetaBot annoy you, you can safely put it on /ignore (possibly channel-only ignore, so that you can still query it privately; check your IRC client).

Please do NOT try to use MetaBot commands in the channel. It won't accept them, anyway.

The MetaBot sourcecode is available as part of the Ubuntu IRC Bots projects.