IRC channel/Management

   01:01 +glguy> +mz an wait for a on topic question
   01:01 +glguy> all of the offtopic conversations die off
   01:01 +glguy> because no one can see any responses to them

   01:01 +dons> so the plan should be to ban redirect people into here to talk to them?
   01:01 +dons> or privmsg, because it's calmer?

   01:02 +glguy> redirect ban to here is good for wide-reaching bans
   01:02 +glguy> say all of tor
   01:02 +glguy> or *ass*!*@*
   01:02 +glguy> where you are likely to have some false positives
   01:02 +glguy> I don't like them as much for specific bans
   01:03 +glguy> other uses are redirect bans to ##fix_your_connection
   01:03 +glguy> where you aren't punishing the person
   01:03 +glguy> and want them to know that their join/quit flood isn't allowed

   01:04 +glguy> You can "remove"
   01:04 +glguy> that forces a PART
   01:04 +glguy> instead of a KICK
   01:04 +glguy> the difference being that many clients don't auto-rejoin
   01:04 +glguy> on PART

   01:05 +glguy> +q ____   and +b %____ are identical and just silence the offender
   01:05 +glguy> but don't prevent joins

   01:07 +glguy> oh, and don't forget about +d bans
   01:07 +glguy> they match on the "real name" field

Bans

I default to *!*@hostname bans, especially when I expect it to be a temporary ban or when banning an unregistered nick. Hostname specific bans against a dynamically assigned hostname should be cleared periodically. -- glguy

I am much less lenient with someone that join/spams than with someone that has a history of productive behaviour who slips up. I have no problem kick/temp-banning a join/spammer while I'm likely to warn and chat with a regular user who violates the policy. -- glguy

Many users aren't aware of what acceptable #haskell behavior is. We keep the channel noise level low to encourage productive, on-topic discussion. Private messages to a problem user explaining why a behaviour is not acceptable are often successful at neutralizing a situation before it escalates. Of course other users are intentionally disruptive, but even these are eligible to be saved. I will often ban the user in the channel without kicking (which mutes them) and immediately send a private message explaining the situation. --glguy

Chaos Control

This situation hasn't really happened in #haskell before, but since I've dealt with it in other channels I'll document it here:

Sometimes the channel can become wildly off-topic with too many people to blame to point individual fingers. The most effective way I've found to deal with this problem is to +o a few of the channel moderators and to set the channel to +mz. This configures the channel such that only +o users can read the messages and respond to them. This off-topic conversation will die out and once someone asks a productive, on-topic questions you can set the mode to -mz and return to normal. -- glguy

Dealing with gateway abuse

Some people think that IRC gateways like Tor and Mibbit grant them enough anonymity that they can hassle IRC channels unchecked. If someone is reconnecting through such a gateway and proving difficult to ban, do the following (example using tor):

/ban *!*@gateway/tor/*!#haskell-ops

This will redirect all Tor users to #haskell-ops. If a legitimate user gets caught in this wide-reaching ban, you can add an exception for that specific user:

/mode #haskell +e nick!user@host