From BlenderWiki

IRC: A Moderator's Guide

Sensibilities and Goals

The channel is meant to be a safe, family friendly environment for people to get support with Blender.

The ethos behind what this actually means, boils down to the fact we want to look professional and friendly on behalf of the Blender Foundation.

If you had a child and were learning to use a new software with him/her, what you would find appropriate in a support channel considered to be representing Blender in terms of conduct, language and behavior.

As an operator you will be expected to interpret what this means to the best of your abilities. You have been chosen because it’s deemed you will be able to do this in a fair manner.

Some points:

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 behavior of people on a channel is the most powerful influence on newbies arriving on the channel.

Concentrate on solving problems, not bestowing blame. Treat the situation as the problem, accept the users for who they are and try to figure out how best to help resolve the difficulty.

Don't be elitist. Today's newbies are tomorrow's experts. A support channel is a place where people with knowledge lead by example.

Don't be caught by support burnout. It's nearly impossible to answer every technical question that comes to your channel. In many cases, the problem doesn't 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.

Avoid advocacy debates. BSD versus GPL, vi versus emacs, centralized versus decentralized, 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.

Take critiques to private message. Criticizing someone's behavior on channel holds them up to public scrutiny in a negative way. It's usually overkill. In your messages, don't address the subject of whether you have channel operator privileges; just be courteous. Request nicely that they change their behavior. In many cases you'll 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'll need to do that a lot less.

More detail can be found on Freenode's channel guidelines.

Channel Management: Operator Commands

Talk to the user in PM first of all as discussed earlier. See if a kind word will cure the challenging behaviour. DON'T argue with them. DON'T threaten. It’s useless. You can state the facts, just try not to get drawn in to some debate about policy.

If that doesn’t work, the user could be referred to another operator, and / or quieted on the channel.

To find an operator:

• /msg ChanServ ACCESS #blender LIST

To quiet or unquiet a user:

• /cs quiet #blender username

• /cs unquiet #blender username

If /cs doesn’t work in your client you need to use /msg chanserv instead.

This is the simplest way to quiet. You do not need to OP yourself on channel. The user in question may see “you have been quieted by XYZ” depending on their client, however other users will not know who performed the quiet.

Quieting in this fashion works best if the user is logged in.. A user changing nick can get around this fairly easily.

Using an IP MASK

You may perform a /whois on the user to do this, or the mask may be visible in your client.

Mask format:

• /cs QUIET #blender *!*@*.Their.IP.Address

where:

• *!* is the user's nick and username in the format: nick!username
• *.Their.IP.Address is the IP address used in their connection

Quieting using the user's IP will prevent circumvention by changing nick.

Getting a list of quieted or banned users:

• /mode #blender +q (list of quieted users)

• /mode #blender +b (list of banned users)

This can be useful if you receive a PM from someone having trouble connecting or talking in the channel. Their IP mask or username may be included by accident in a wider ban.

Banning and OPing on channel

It is rare, the need to actually become operator on the channel for all to see. If you can avoid doing so, do. Showing you are an operator can raise the channel temperature.

It is necessary to OP yourself in order to place a BAN on a user - this is to be used when a quiet is not sufficient. You may also quiet users in a similar way.

• /cs op #blender

• /cs deop #blender

USE WITH CARE the following!

• /mode #channel +b *!*@IP.Goes.Here

• /mode #channel +q *!*@IP.Goes.Here

Placing the +b flag on a user bans them from the channel. This may be followed with a kick. The +q flag quiets the user, in the same way asking chanserv to do it will

In cases where you want to reverse the ban or quiet in this way, simply change the +b or +q to -b or -q.

Channel Flooding

On occasion, IRC rooms are attacked by botnets. This is an unfortunate, but inevitable, occurrence on the internet. Fortunately, IRC and Freenode offer various techniques to combat this abuse:

• Locking the channel with the +r tag prohibits unregistered users from entering the room. This does not affect unregistered users currently in the room.
• Extbans may be used to quiet unregistered users in the channel, regardless of when they join. This is a less intrusive technique than +r and does not prevent users from joining.

Set these modes with the syntax:

• /mode #blender +r
• /mode #blender +q $~a

$ is Freenode's syntax for an extban (extended ban). a matches registered users. '~' negates the following flag, in this case a, thus setting quiet on all unregistered users in the channel.

For more information on Freenode's extbans, see their help page.

Additional useful flags are +t and +n. +t enables topic protection. +n disables outside messages.