IRC guidelines

IRC in the Mer project

We use IRC for a variety of real-time conversations:

• Meetings
• Discussion
• Troubleshooting
• Collaboration
• Chatting with other contributors

General Guidelines

• The most important: Ask smart questions: Eric Raymond wrote a good text on how best to ask questions - http://catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html - reading this text and understanding it will help you to get the optimal experience out of the communication within the Mer project and the best answers to help your work
• Pick the right channel: if you aren't sure, you should start in our main #mer channel and you may be redirected to the right place
• Keep it clean: many of us participate from work, so keep the language clean.
• Don't be a jerk: treat people with respect and consideration - no regional, racial, gender or other abuse will be tolerated. We are people from all over the world and from many different projects utilizing Mer and we all have to work together.
• Be helpful: be patient with new people and be willing to jump in to answer questions.
• Stay calm: the written word is always subject to interpretation, so give people the benefit of the doubt and try not to let emotions get out of control.
• Don't post chunks: avoid posting big chunks of text - use a pastebin or a similar service to shorten it to a link.
• Be Patient: Folks might not be around when you ask a question so wait a while for someone to speak before leaving.
• Don't Private Message: Ask permission before you send someone a private message (PM) as not everyone likes them. Also by keeping it in public others with similar issues can see the solution you were given.
• More information: this IRC primer for new users and the general IRC guidelines from freenode are also useful resources.

Guideline Violations

Guideline Violations - 3 Strikes Method

The point of this section is not to find opportunities to punish people, but we do need a fair way to deal with people who are making our community an unpleasant place.

First occurrence: Public reminder that the behavior is inappropriate according to our guidelines.

Second occurrence: Private message warning the user that any additional violations will result in removal from the community.

Third occurrence: Depending on the violation, may include account deletion or banning. Notes:

Obvious spammers are banned on first occurrence. This is necessary to keep the community free of spam.

Violations are forgiven after 6 months of good behavior.

Minor formatting / style infractions will be dealt with through education, not the 3 strikes process.

Extreme violations of a threatening, abusive, destructive or illegal nature will be addressed immediately and are not subject to 3 strikes.

Contact the mailing list with a Advisory board agenda item to report abuse or appeal violations (mistakes happen & will be corrected).