Forum:CT Archive/Making IRC more user-friendly

In the CT about the Wikia chat feature, made a very good point regarding the user-friendliness of our current IRC channel configuration. For easy reference, I'll quote him here:

"Second, there seems to be a general assumption that just because Wookieepedia Administration & Friends are tech-savy, that any other user with a reasonable issue is also tech-savy. Our own IRC set-up seems designed to be exclusive and non-user-friendly. Unless things have changed in the last month or so, the IRC redirects anyone that hasn't configured the settings of their client into #wookieepedia-social, a channel that is generally untended and ignored by regulars and most of the chan-ops. If you use Wikia's CGI gateway, you are shunted into this side channel with no way into the actual #wookieepedia. After modifying your browser with non-standard plug-ins or downloading and installing a dedicated IRC client, you have to register and identify every time you sign in to access the channel that is actually populated. It is a lot of trouble to go through just to report an issue to a live admin. While it certainly "filters the chaff", the system in place also discourages communication between new and veteran users."

That pretty much explains what the issue is, though I want to add something. What about users who get blocked? The "you are blocked" message tells them that they should appeal their block on IRC, yet I wonder how many users who may have had a legitimate reason to appeal did not do so because they couldn't figure out how to get into the main channel. Probably a very small number, but even one is too many.

Therefore, I propose the following addition to IRC:

8. Per a consensus decision on, the permanent or semi-permanent use of either "/mode +r" or "/mode +q $~a" (as explained here) is prohibited in the main #wookieepedia channel. These modes may be applied temporarily on an as-needed basis to deal with cases of abuse that cannot be dealt with by banning the offender(s) or muting the channel, but such uses should be rare and last only as long as absolutely necessary, ideally no more than three hours.

Support

 * 1) As proposer.  Master Jonathan &mdash; Jedi Council Chambers Saturday, July 23, 2011, 20:07 UTC