[sudo-discuss] IRC

[Clarence Beeks]

Do you know why America is awesome?  We have the time and privilege and
resources to argue
over replacing a "Y" with a "J".

I can't wait for the next comet.

On Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 12:54 PM, Yardena Cohen <yardenack at gmail.com> wrote:

> >> Apparently the Sudo folk with admin privileges to the #sudoroom IRC
> channel are jealously resistant to sharing control,
>
> > This is not the case. Jordana and Tunabananas have operator privileges
> and can perform any sort of moderation they desire. If you have an issue
> with the content of #sudoroom, creating a new channel will not solve that
> problem.
>
> I avoided replying to this right away, because I was too angry and
> creeped out over being called "Jordana." He did this once before in
> the IRC while at the same time talking about me with male pronouns
> (he/his) - he knows better, so I took this as targeted harassment, or
> at the very least disingenuous passive aggressive participation in the
> trolling games that have been going on lately. He's apologized to me
> in private since then but I just want to register that joking about
> hackerspace wars can be fun, but actually gaslighting each other is
> NOT fun. It can be scary, intimidating, and seriously compromise the
> accessibility and diversity of our community.
>
> As to the substance, he's absolutely right that we have op privileges,
> but this obscures a few things. For technical background, I encourage
> people to read about the difference between +F and +o. Your best guide
> will be logging onto freenode and typing: "/msg chanserv help flags"
> but more general guides are online:
>
>    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRC#Modes
>    https://freenode.net/using_the_network.shtml
>
> There've been conflicts over how to run the channel. Namely:
>
> 1) The person with +F has used his privileges to override the
> decisions of those with only +o, at several times unquieting people
> we've quieted. The contexts for these were admittedly controversial
> and fall on ideological fault lines over how to run an IRC channel in
> general, so I agree 100% with Andrew that a clear IRC policy is the
> way to go. For the record, this has been mostly about using oppressive
> slurs, and my position has been not to tolerate them very much. We
> happen to have in our community a person who makes it his life's work
> to push peoples' buttons with slurs, and happened to be doing that IN
> the IRC channel. He'd also made a habit of typing anatomical words at
> random times. Form your own opinions. Again, the solution to this may
> be more about having a clear policy, than who enforces it.
>
> 2) The person with +F has acted in bad faith. He flooded the channel
> with ascii art of an ejaculating swastika and claimed it was an
> "accident", which would be a no-brainer kban in most any channel. When
> asked to share +F with other people, his response was to vandalize the
> Sudoroom wiki to say he is the "leader" (
> http://sudoroom.org/wiki/Community_Structure ). In the meantime, he
> shares +F with a friend of his who hadn't been to Sudoroom since
> summer 2012 and didn't even seem to know anybody's name. They'd also
> set the +S (successor) flag for a person who is emphatically NOT a
> Sudoroom member and has even publically criticized Sudoroom. This sent
> a clear message to the rest of us that we were dealing with people who
> saw us as a joke; didn't respect our community; and that there was
> little we could do about it in the short term. That mistrust has
> colored all of the talk over IRC privileges since then, and has only
> escalated since these same people came to our 1/16 meeting and made it
> significantly longer (by complaining about the meeting being long!),
> and also filled our meeting agenda notes with things like "fuck",
> "poop" and "this is why you guys never hack anything".
>
> I'm not bitter or anything, just trying to bring out some of the
> subtext here for those not following why things are happening the way
> they are.
>
> I think the best formulation for IRC rules that everyone can agree on
> would be something like: we want the IRC channel to accurately reflect
> the atmosphere at the physical sudoroom space. To me, that nicely
> encompasses all the many behavioral problems and general do's and
> don'ts. Honestly the room itself has rarely had the kind of problems
> the channel has, because people tend to be a lot more decent to each
> other face to face, and because it self-selects for people who care
> about the community.
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>
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