Policy for #winbolo on irc.winbolo.us

The vision for the IRC Network is to be a tolerable place, in the spirit of Kax's post on WBN. – so tolerable that people enjoy coming and express themselves without feeling so constrained about having to be so careful to step on ops toes - whether it be the server op's toes, or whether it be an op on a bad day.

I feel that the less time an ops power is used, the better everyone feels. Because when someone uses ops, it doesn't just affect that person being the target, but it affects everyone who does not have ops because they don't have any power to protect themselves. Thus, we have to be very careful about the atmosphere we set in the channel with the way we use ops. To be a popular choice, instead of "we have to go there because we have no choice if we want to play winbolo" We must use ops in a very responsible manner, and be very respectable to people about it when we do use it.

Having said all that, we still need a basic commonsense policy so that the channel is open for discussion.

With that in mind, here is the list of kickable/bannable offenses from #winbolo:

• Flooding, by repeating the same line over and over, or pasting a bunch of lines to purposely cause a disruption (in example: pasting 20+ lines of text for reference when it doesn't interrupt a conversation is fine, but pasting 15 lines of text when other people are having a conversation not related to the text is NOT fine.) Operators are given some discretion to administer warnings, kicks & bans for 'gray area' flooding activity.
• Ruining games started on a bot connected to .us, which consists of the following:
1. 1) If you did not start the game (cause it be created by the server), then wait until teams are organized and everyone is ready before actually playing. Please be Patient. (Password-ed games only)
2. If someone asks you to leave (and you did not create the map), then leave without a fuss. Many times people organize games with set players, and then start a map to play that game. Once a game has started, if you join and ANYONE asks you to leave, do so.
3. The person who started the map via the gamebot on IRC gets the final decision in how big the game is and who has to leave or can stay. Pre go. (Password-ed games only)
4. NO HACKS ALLOWED (any game type)
5. Do not kill (shut down) a game in which other people are still playing. (Any game type)

Bans for game infractions can only be enacted on people who use IRC; it’s totally useless to ban the IP of someone committing these offenses if they never come on IRC

• Rules concerning IRC commands and the game bots:
1. Do not start an excessive amount of maps in which you do not intend to play.
2. Do not repeatedly trigger a bots trademark response (Scripts such as, nycbot’s bah or renbot’s idiot script). (more then 3 times in 30 seconds is too much)
• Using a script that causes excessive repeating of stuff. The "Bah" for sheepbot is reasonable, the "gg" script isn't.
• Nick change flood. Excessive nick changes to purposefully flood the channel. (Nick changing though, even if a lot and it doesn't flood the channel is ok)
• Ban Walking

If you are an op, and you see someone committing one of the kickable/banable offense, instead of just kicking them outright, *first* /msg them a polite message that *respectfully*ask them to stop the behavior. If they refuse or ignore the request then proceed to kick them with the reason stated in the kick. If they come back and continue the behavior, then go ahead and kick-ban them for a period of time. The reason for a kick/ban is to always be stated, rather in the kick message or in the channel prior to the kick. The goal is to kick the least people possible, and in the event of kicking/banning people, to treat them with the *utmost respect possible*, no matter how rude they are.

Asking them to stop and kicking them is what we consider their warning. By all means use common sense here. If they should undoubtedly know better just kick them with the reason stated and post about the incident. If it’s something minor, message them a polite message respectfully requesting they stop. We keep such detail info on the forum for the reason of going and looking to see if the person has been previously warned, kicked, etc over the same thing.

Please try to understand the vision for the channel and try to keep within it. Certainly a warning isn’t required if there’s no doubt they know better, but this requires a judgment call and is so dynamic there’s no way to cover everything that will come about. If there’s a problem with the way you warned, kicked, or banned you’ll surely hear about it.

When any of us perform a kick, or ban we require that person to post the log of the incident, a description of what happen from the ops point of view and a copy of the game log from WBN (if applicable) on the #winbolo-ops forum, more information on this posted here. The reason is still required in the kick message and/or in the channel before kicking/banning from the acting op.

The following can result in being banned from the IRC network:

• DoS (Denial of Service) Attacks on anyone (This includes ping flood, hang-up ping, nuking, etc)
• Abusing any of the winbolo.us services (including using nickserv to steal nicknames, and ghost kill their actual owners.)
• Any attempt of hacking the server or services.
• Extreme flooding, flooding to the point to cause the server or services problems (also considered a DoS attack)

On the subject of starting other channels -anyone can do it and set any rules they want - even rules such as "server ops are not allowed into this channel" are fine.

The following, as you noticed are not listed above, and are stuff that is NOT considered to be a kickable/bannable offense:

• Insulting someone, whether it is a non-op, op, or server op. (Ops should deal with stuff of a personal manner in the same way a user would, either ignoring them, defending yourself verbally, verbally attack back, laugh it off, etc. In other words, deal with the problem as a normal user would have to, not as an op has the ability to!)
• Having an argument with someone.
• Using Color
• Asking for ops and voice (unless it turns into a flood like behavior)

If there is a behavior that may annoy someone, but is not listed in the kickable/bannable list, then all an op (and non-op) can do is to please ask that person to stop. Sometimes, asking in a respectable manner via /msg without a hint of threat works wonders and helps a lot... Again, I stress the importance of letting people air their grievances and opinions without fear of retribution in the form of being kicked/banned!

In order to keep the spirit of respecting non-ops and fellow ops, the following are actions not allowed to be carried out by ops:

• kicking/banning for fun
• kicking/banning other ops
• kicking people because they insulted you
• putting the channel to a +m (* See exception below)
• devoicing someone a different op voiced
• op/voicing someone then removing it (the only exception is a mistake (this is scrutinized))
• oping another person that’s not normally an op (all authorized ops are on chanserv’s aop list, ops may op other ops if services are down. The channel admins are the only ones allowed to guest op.)
• Auto oping or voicing anyone. (chanserv takes care of this, if someone needs to be added to chanserv please contact sheeps or LRL)
• removing another op's ban (only channel admins/owner may do so in the most dire circumstances - i.e., the op hasn't been around for a while and the situation has been resolved, out of spirit with policy, etc)
• removing another op’s op (-o) (only admins may remove an op from a user, and only for extreme circumstances (such as op abusing .us policy, bad script, etc))
• Threatening action against a non-op

OP’s Breaking any part of this policy may be warned or have their OP status suspended or removed.

#winbolo admins are fi, LRL, sheeps and ud

* (the +m may only be used in extreme cases of a massive attack flood by multiple users)

Originally written by fi, edited by LRL, with credit to Kax for inspiring this policy.

Originally created on July23^rd 2003

P.S. you can also look at the FAQ for IRC

Revised Dec 18^th, 2005: The original policy can be found here (NO LONGER IN USE)

Revised Oct 9^th, 2006: revised the game rules 2 and 3 to make long standing practice written in and more understandable.