InternetRelayChatUduSpec

InternetRelayChat

Status

Introduction

The primary Ubuntu IRC channel is getting out of hand and a host of creative solutions to this problem should be pursued.

Rationale

  • #ubuntu IRC is spirally out of control into a world of lies, deceit and pornography. -- Anonymous

The Ubuntu IRC channel is increasingly difficult to use and many people have complained to the community council and others about the lack of oversight and the negative implications on the IRC community (one of our most important contact points). This spec lays out a plan for dealing with these problems.

Current Situation

There are very few #ubuntu operators and very few of the current operators use their power or even monitor the channel. The community council took this up at a previous meeting and did not do a very good job of moving forward with their plan to take nominations for new operators and move forward with this due to a missed meeting.

The old situation stands: there are a growing number of people trolling, handing out incorrect advice. There are also a large number of spambots which spit out advertisements into the channel.

This all makes the #ubuntu channel increasingly difficult to use.

None of the Canonical or Ubuntu people can spend their time monitoring the channel all the time and none of the community people are -- or feel -- empowered to take action. People are not even telling other people stand down or remind them of the code of conduct which, when this has been invoked in the past, has been largely effective even when coming from non-operators.

Currently, there is a bot called uhelper which gets told factoids of information but the people who put information in the bot often put in factually incorrect information.

Part of the problem is that much of the documentation is lacking so people ask on IRC -- which is always more difficult to point people to.

There are two groups of people who are creating problems on IRC:

  • Actively irritating people who are going out of their way to troll or spam;
  • The larger group people who are nice and well intentioned but who give out incorrect information or who are unintentionally rude or counterproductive to the community.

Part of the problem stems from the fact that the power on IRC is highly centralized and currently centralized with a group of people that do not care and do not use their power.

Implementation Plan

Our solutions break down into the following steps:

  • Keep a bot like apt or dpkg in the #debian IRC channel. If we keep uhelper, someone needs to do an audit of the information in the bot to make sure that the information is factually.
  • When people step out of line, they should be reminded of the CoC. All members, operators or not, should be encouraged to remind others of this but should be criticized when they abuse this privilege and invoke it unnecessarily or inappropriately.
  • We should also make sure that we should have some operator in the channel -- even when they are not active. With no visible operators, people are more willing to act out of line.
  • The CC should appoint more people as operators beginning with this list to be run by the members and then to be confirmed at the next community council:
    • crimsun
    • tritium
    • ajmitch
    • carlk
    • Amaranth
    • dholbach
    • ogra
  • We should also make the CC operators on the channel if they are not already and let people know that they can be called to examine a situation and react if there is disagreement between operators or if there are no operators currently active in the channel. The CC currently is made up of:
    • mako
    • Kamion
    • elmo
    • sabdfl

CategoryUdu CategorySpec

UbuntuDownUnder/BOFs/InternetRelayChatUduSpec (last edited 2008-08-06 16:32:49 by localhost)