IRC Policy - ParabolaWiki

# IRC Policy

Note: This is only a draft, it has not yet been "ratified" by the community.

## We are hosted on freenode

IRC is used to get Real Time Help via chat. The Parabola IRC channels are hosted on freenode; it is thus necessary to follow freenode's polices.

## Parabola policy

### Rules

1. Be polite, be helpful and respectful to each other.
   1. Don't be an annoyance or insult each other. Have fun, but keep it in good taste.
   2. Trolling is not acceptable.
   3. Don't log into the channel planning to spend your whole evening constantly insulting members of the channel -- or any other gender, group, culture, religion, etc. -- it is neither polite nor helpful.
   4. Do not /msg people without asking. Ask for permission before you send private messages to a member.
   5. Don't spam the channel. This includes flooding, highlighting everyone's nick for no reason, or any other attack on the channel. Use a pastebin for larger amounts of text.
   6. No public logging or any other form of public statistics collection of our IRC channel.
2. Proprietary Software is off-topic.
   1. Do not promote, recommend, or provide support for Proprietary Software and Distributions on our channel.
   2. Optionally free is not enough for the general public.

### Abuses will not be tolerated

On the first violation of rule #1, you will receive a warning.

On the second violation of rule #1, you will be marked +q, which means that while it looks to you like you are a member of the channel, no one else will see what you write.

As an exception, obvious spammers may be marked +q without warning.

If you have to be marked +q multiple times, and keep on repeating the problematic behavior, you will be banned from the channel.

### Appeals

Bans and +qs may be appealed by PMing the person who banned or +qd you. If s/he doesn't want to talk, send the appeal to the dev mailing list .

## Summary

Don't be an annoyance, don't support Proprietary Software. It is disappointing that it needs to be said. This policy mostly exists to lay out what to expect if you act unreasonably.

## Ratification

--Fauno (talk) 00:23, 14 September 2013 (UTC) I think it's ok, +1

  It's been changed quite a bit since Fauno posted this

I think it's too complicated right now. Too much "don't piss on the floor". ~ Lukeshu (talk) 01:23, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

"Don't be an asshole, don't support unfree software" make it seem like only supporting unfree software makes you and asshole, while other assholy behavior can be ok -- Fauno (talk) 19:46, 21 January 2015 (UTC)