tensixtyone

A month or so ago, Phillip Newbrough of the CrunchBang Linux project made me a IRC Operator in the offical support channel, #crunchbang on Freenode. During the last few weeks the IRC channel has exploded with popularity, from a low average of 5-10 at the start of January, the channel now idles at around 35-45 users.  This is a massive improvement over the course of a month.

With the influx of new users come a influx of new trolls, every channel has them, every channel loathes them. Unfortunately #! has not been exempt from this. It came to great shame when within the first few weeks of the channel getting popular we had to ban our first user. Banning is a last resort in my eyes, and in the case of this user he was disrupting the channel and offending numerous other users. Action had to be took, and now that user is serving a one week temporary ban.

So, what can we do to avoid this horrible situation? The times when it’s the trolls vs. the operators, the back and forth can alienate new users and turn other users against the established operators. This provides a very difficult situation for anyone to handle, and something we want to avoid in the channel. So, In response to the rapid growth of the channel we’ve picked a few new operators, people who we trust, and while they’re not seasoned IRC users they show the level head required to take on this role. In addition to that we’ve took on a new rule set to clearly define the boundaries of the channel, Now the users and operators will understand where the buck stops and know clearly between right and wrong on the channel.

So, what next? Well, we’re still in the process of guiding our new operators in the way of IRC moderating, this will take time but hopefully we’ll come out with excellent results. An addition to the logging bot (Scribbler) will allow for “incidents”, that is, kicks and bans from the IRC channel, to be reported to the correct people. We are clarifying our complaints procedure, for people who think they’ve been kick/banned unfairly. I’m sure you’ll get to hear more details as times go on, and I’ll even post some specifics in the near future.