Channel Guidelines

IRC is a low-band­width method of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, in com­par­i­son with phys­i­cal pres­ence. Many of the cues of phys­i­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tion, tone of voice, fa­cial ex­pres­sion, hand move­ments, etc., are miss­ing in IRC, since only text is trans­mit­ted back and forth. Speak­ers in phys­i­cal prox­im­i­ty with each oth­er com­mu­ni­cate quite a bit of emo­tion­al con­text via this ex­tra band­width. This con­text en­ables them to avoid mis­judg­ing the in­tent of their con­ver­sa­tion­al part­ners. It also func­tions as an un­con­scious neg­a­tive feed­back mech­a­nism to re­duce the in­ci­dence of emo­tion­al "firestorms" which tend to dis­rupt the ef­fi­cient flow of con­ver­sa­tion. Hu­man be­ings look for this feed­back, and in­deed they may have evolved to re­quire it. In the low-band­width world of IRC, they must in­stead rely on emo­tion­al feed­back from the text they re­ceive.

This process is sub­ject to ex­ag­ger­a­tion. Small amounts of emo­tion be­come mag­ni­fied in the per­cep­tion of the ob­serv­er. So, it is very im­por­tant to keep chan­nels calm. An in­for­mal con­cep­tu­al mea­sure­ment of the emo­tion­al con­tent of a chan­nel is its "chan­nel tem­per­a­ture."

Think of a per­son­'s emo­tion­al state as ki­net­ic en­er­gy. En­thu­si­asm, hap­pi­ness, anger, frus­tra­tion all add to the en­er­gy lev­el. The more emo­tion is ex­pe­ri­enced, the "hot­ter" the par­tic­i­pant. The av­er­age emo­tion­al state of a chan­nel is its tem­per­a­ture. Emo­tions in IRC be­come ex­ag­ger­at­ed and con­vey­ing them di­rect­ly in­creas­es chan­nel tem­per­a­ture. Pen­t-up frus­tra­tion, in par­tic­u­lar, is of­ten re­leased as a se­ries of in­ap­pro­pri­ate, "high en­er­gy" out­bursts. An im­por­tant ob­jec­tive of the freen­ode chan­nel guide­lines is to avoid "feed­back loops" in chan­nel in­ter­ac­tions by re­duc­ing chan­nel tem­per­a­ture.

The guide­lines which fol­low are de­signed with the ben­e­fit of years of ex­pe­ri­ence with IRC, be­gin­ning dur­ing the 1993-1994 pe­ri­od when the de­sign lim­i­ta­tions of IRC be­gan to be­come clear due to the in­creas­ing scale of IRC net­works. Adopt­ing the guide­lines will help im­prove the over­all qual­i­ty of your chan­nel, and of the dis­cus­sions that can take place in it. We in­ten­tion­al­ly avoid draw­ing a dis­tinc­tion be­tween chan­nel op­er­a­tors and users. Every­one is a user, re­gard­less of their priv­i­lege lev­el, and each user has the abil­i­ty to in­flu­ence the us­abil­i­ty of the chan­nel.

Guidelines:

• Pol­ish your cat­a­lyst skills. The cat­a­lyst role is cru­cial to keep­ing chan­nel in­ter­ac­tions friend­ly and ef­fi­cient.
• Look for the best in peo­ple. If you as­sume peo­ple have no self­-­con­trol, they will con­firm your be­lief. If you look for per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, and ask for per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, most peo­ple will re­spond well.
• Set a good ex­am­ple. Be what you want oth­er peo­ple to be. If you want them to be calm, be calm. If you want them to be cour­te­ous and friend­ly, be cour­te­ous and friend­ly. The ha­bit­u­al be­hav­iour of peo­ple on a chan­nel is the most pow­er­ful in­flu­ence on new­bies ar­riv­ing on the chan­nel.
• Be nice if some­one mes­sages you. They have gone to the trou­ble to seek out some­one with the back­ground to help them. You are it! Be flat­tered they have sin­gled you out. If you think they will get bet­ter sup­port by ask­ing their ques­tion on chan­nel, just let them know.
• Don't dis­play chan­nel op­er­a­tor priv­i­leges. Dis­play­ing these priv­i­leges on your nick with a "+o" at­tracts par­tic­i­pants who are in­ter­est­ed in gain­ing them and us­ing them ac­tive­ly; it also at­tracts the at­ten­tion of par­tic­i­pants who re­act neg­a­tive­ly to au­thor­i­ty. Have your ac­count added to the chan­nel ac­cess list and op your­self only when need­ed.
• Use chan­nel op­er­a­tor priv­i­leges spar­ing­ly. Each time you use them you raise the chan­nel tem­per­a­ture. Users will be pleased with you, an­gry at you, frus­trat­ed that you used them in­ap­pro­pri­ate­ly, en­vi­ous that you have con­trol over the dis­cus­sion. None of these re­ac­tions may be con­scious on the part of oth­er users, but all of them in­crease the chan­nel tem­per­a­ture.
• Avoid high­light­ing and rep­e­ti­tion. Words and sen­tences in al­l-up­per­case, heavy use of high­light­ing, beep­ing (^G) on pub­lic chan­nels, re­peat­ing the same lines over and over--all of these be­hav­iours ir­ri­tate peo­ple and raise the chan­nel tem­per­a­ture.
• Avoid emo­tive speech. Slang per­tain­ing to sex and sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, ex­cre­tion and re­li­gious oaths are rarely used to dis­cuss the ap­plic­a­bil­i­ty of those top­ics to your group's ac­tiv­i­ties. In gen­er­al, lan­guage with strong emo­tion­al con­tent and only light mean­ing should be con­sid­ered "emo­tive speech". It does not mat­ter whether the lan­guage is so­cial­ly ac­cept­able or un­ac­cept­able. For ex­am­ple, use of the word "fsck" which does not re­fer to a Unix filesys­tem check is emo­tive. Sim­i­lar­ly, use of the word "gay" which has noth­ing to do with ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty is emo­tive. Emo­tive speech rais­es the chan­nel tem­per­a­ture.
• Avoid sen­si­tive ma­te­r­i­al. Some users on freen­ode chan­nels, par­tic­u­lar­ly on pub­lic chan­nels, are quite young. Oth­ers are par­ents or teach­ers who might have young chil­dren near­by. As you type com­ments or ASCII art, or post URLs for oth­ers to view, please con­sid­er the age range of oth­er users on your chan­nel, and re­spect the right of par­ents and teach­ers to de­cide when and if to ex­pose the chil­dren in their charge to ma­te­r­i­al or lan­guage which might of­fend, con­fuse or raise dif­fi­cult is­sues. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, some of our users con­nect to freen­ode from cor­po­rate en­vi­ron­ments. Em­ploy­ers may be un­hap­py with the un­ex­pect­ed ap­pear­ance of sen­si­tive ma­te­r­i­al on work­place com­put­ers. Please be con­sid­er­ate and avoid post­ing such ma­te­r­i­al when you are not com­plete­ly sure it is safe to do so.
• Avoid ad­vo­ca­cy de­bates. BSD ver­sus GPL, vi ver­sus emacs, cen­tralised ver­sus de­cen­tralised, RMS ver­sus ESR: these dis­cus­sions are fre­quent­ly re­li­gious and may not in­volve sig­nif­i­cant new ideas. They can also raise the chan­nel tem­per­a­ture quite a bit. Cer­tain ad­vo­ca­cy dis­cus­sions, such as those re­volv­ing around ac­tu­al re­li­gion or pol­i­tics, are al­most guar­an­teed to raise the chan­nel tem­per­a­ture to lev­els that make oth­er con­ver­sa­tion dif­fi­cult. You might not get too worked up if you are ar­gu­ing the rel­a­tive mer­its of poll() or kqueue(), but if you walk into a dis­cus­sion with a strong emo­tion­al need to "get your way," con­sid­er the pos­si­bil­i­ty you are sim­ply ar­gu­ing pref­er­ence or per­son­al af­fil­i­a­tion. Ad­vo­ca­cy dis­cus­sions are best held qui­et­ly, via /msg, or on chan­nels es­pe­cial­ly cre­at­ed for the pur­pose.
• Take crit­i­cism to pri­vate mes­sage. Crit­i­cis­ing some­one's be­hav­iour on chan­nel holds them up to pub­lic scruti­ny in a neg­a­tive way. It's usu­al­ly overkill. In your mes­sages, do not ad­dress the sub­ject of whether you have chan­nel op­er­a­tor priv­i­leges; just be cour­te­ous. Re­quest nice­ly that they change their be­hav­iour. In many cas­es you will dis­cov­er that prob­lem user you are deal­ing with is mere­ly in­ex­pe­ri­enced. An ag­gres­sive tone makes for a longer and more in­volved dis­cus­sion, and pen­t-up frus­tra­tion which will raise the chan­nel tem­per­a­ture soon­er or lat­er. You can al­ways use chan­nel op­er­a­tor priv­i­leges, or have some­one else use them, as need­ed; but with a cour­te­ous tone, you will need to do that a lot less.
• Don't be elit­ist. To­day's new­bies are to­mor­row's ex­perts. A sup­port chan­nel is a place where peo­ple with knowl­edge lead by ex­am­ple. Is the ex­am­ple you want to set that tech­ni­cal knowl­edge is a hi­er­ar­chy of con­trol, or that peo­ple with knowl­edge have an in­her­ent so­cial ad­van­tage over peo­ple who do not? Help­ing oth­er peo­ple takes pa­tience. It is bet­ter not to an­swer a ques­tion than to use the op­por­tu­ni­ty to em­pha­sise the lim­i­ta­tions of the per­son you are try­ing to help.
• Don't be caught by sup­port burnout. It is near­ly im­pos­si­ble to an­swer every tech­ni­cal ques­tion that comes to your chan­nel. In many cas­es, the prob­lem does not lie in the tech­ni­cal as­pects of the ques­tion; cul­tur­al bar­ri­ers may get in the way of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, or it may be dif­fi­cult to ex­plain to a new­bie just where to be­gin. When you try to an­swer every ques­tion, re­gard­less of dif­fi­cul­ty, you set your­self up for sup­port burnout. Sup­port burnout is near­ly al­ways ac­com­pa­nied by the feel­ing that you are los­ing con­trol of your time, that the peo­ple you have set out to help are mak­ing un­rea­son­able de­mands. The prob­lem is that you are tak­ing on too much re­spon­si­bil­i­ty; but it be­gins to ap­pear in­stead that the prob­lem is the end user who is ask­ing for help. Dif­fer­ent peo­ple re­act to sup­port burnout in dif­fer­ent ways. Some of­fer ma­li­cious ad­vice ("rm -rf /" etc.) to new­bies. Some in­sist that every ques­tion a new­bie asks should be an­swered with a URL or by lists of man­u­al ref­er­ences. When the staff of a sup­port chan­nel suf­fer from sup­port burnout, they are like­ly to set ar­bi­trary rules for par­tic­i­pa­tion; these might in­clude pro­hibit­ing the use of cer­tain phras­es in chan­nel, or dis­al­low­ing the use of pri­vate mes­sages to con­tact chan­nel mem­bers. Staff might pro­mul­gate a lengthy, mul­ti­-­page rules doc­u­ment end­ing with a spe­cial pro­ce­dure the user must em­ploy to be voiced in the chan­nel (to make sure they have read the en­tire doc­u­ment be­fore ask­ing any ques­tions). Such ar­bi­trary rule sets tend to grow longer over time, be­cause they do not solve the real prob­lem. You can­not an­swer every ques­tion, and you should not try. Be gen­tle, be cour­te­ous, be flex­i­ble and be as pa­tient and help­ful as you can---but let some­one else try to an­swer ques­tions that you find too frus­trat­ing. Do not try to be a su­per­hu­man sup­port ma­chine.
• If you are con­sid­er­ing pub­lish­ing chan­nel logs, think it through. The freen­ode net­work is an in­ter­ac­tive, re­al-­time en­vi­ron­ment where dis­cus­sions may be heav­i­ly in­flu­enced by ex­ter­nal con­text. Even on pub­lic chan­nels, most users do not weigh their com­ments with the idea that they will be en­shrined in per­pe­tu­ity to stand on their own. For that rea­son, few par­tic­i­pants pub­lish logs and we en­cour­age those com­mu­ni­ties that do to make their par­tic­i­pants aware of this fact.