Eradicating the notion that warnings are only important when given by ops would be helpful. Regular users are also responsible for their behaviour and the atmosphere in the channel, as well as educating newcomers about the rules of this channel. Perhaps they are unable to kick users, but there are certainly measures they can take, such as reporting offences and giving advice.
"every user should be able to warn, and every user, likewise, should be able to retain a decent bit of sensitivity."
This does, if I recall correctly, concur with the current IRC rules page. Flaming is not tolerated - or at least, it should not be. What constitutes flaming, however, varies from person to person, which I gather is part of the problem. The other issue is the double standard we have for old users and new. I doubt that behaviour such as Hexed's would be tolerated from a newcomer, but familiarity with him leads us to have greater tolerance for it as it's "just Hexed being Hexed".
I am guilty of it. I'm sure there are others who treat it as simply an elaborate in-joke. This would be acceptable in most channels, but we've taken it upon ourselves to make this channel PG, and thus have added responsibility. I'm not overly impressed by the "think of the children" defence; what strikes me as important is ensuring that visitors to the channel enjoy their time there. Rather than censoring profanities simply because they are profanities, I would prefer to concentrate on preventing and (if there is no other alternative) punishing inappropriate behaviour when it causes offence to others.
"[Hexed] has demonstrated on this and other occasions he is not mature enough to be an op."
Hexed's op rights were removed several months ago. The current ops are Azul, MelodiousNature, Kate, DTN, Bluer, Yermom, Gamer, Xion4ever, SSC, Sapharus, Faethin, Kryten, Neumannz and myself. For the record, only Azul, Faethin and I are able to remove or give ops permanently, and Faethin is only there for maintenance purposes (I think). Any new op candidates will, and have, been considered by both Azul and myself after they've been brought to our attention.
"If they want to troll, swear, post crap, and so on, there are hundreds of thousands of channels and chatrooms across the internet you may choose to do so in."
Indeed, we have one already: it's called #lolkick. By the way, Kate, I believe you used a word we're no longer allowed to say on the channel - does that extend to the wiki ;)?
On that note, I ask that the following words be removed from the swear filter:
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I agree with pretty much everything, except for the whole disowning the channel bit. Getting rid of the IRC would be a very hypocritical move, as we pretty much cheer on the use of it and not User Space for conversations. It isn't the channel's fault, it's the channeleers. Ninja, sensitivity may be hard to retain, but letting it out through anger is pretty much smashing everything assuming good faith stands for. Like everything that has rules, as soon as any user enters the IRC, they are agreeing to follow them. That is always how it is universally. If users have dropped to a going so low as to just breaking them, and the users in charge OR ANYONE ELSE FOR THAT MATTER do barely anything to stop it, we have a serious problem on our hands.
