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