>> 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.