Channel Guidelines

Ask your question outright and be patient.

Ask your question and be patient. You do not need permission to ask a question. Just ask your question. There are certain times of the day when people will not be available to help. Repeating your question will not increase the speed with which they return to the keyboard. Also consider that it is possible no one present knows the answer to your question. Please wait at least 30 minutes before you repeat a question.

Be civil and positive.

Be civil and respect other people's opinions, whether you agree or not. Please do not be rude, judgmental or belittling. Respond to incivility with greater civility and respect. Please do not accuse others or request kicks or bans in public, engage in personal attacks, intentionally offend or provoke others. Do not discuss or taunt users who have been removed, kicked, banned, quieted or devoiced. Be positive.

Be considerate.

Be Considerate. Please do not intentionally annoy or harass users, whether by spamming, trolling, flamebaiting, astroturfing, soapboxing or typing in all caps. Do not run "now playing" scripts. By performing excessive /nick, /join or /parts, you flood all users in the channel with many meaningless lines so please try to avoid it. If an individual user appears to be having connection problems they may be temporarily banned to prevent flooding. IRC presents users with away status notifications; it is unnecessary to publicly announce changes in away status (including sending text to the channel, changing your current nick to nick|away, etc.).

Assume good faith.

IRC lacks the normal facial expressions and body language used in everyday conversation. Without these it can be easy to misunderstand the intentions of someone and lead to uncomfortable situations. Try to assume good faith and avoid reacting negatively. If you have difficulty supressing your reactions, please use /ignore until you are calm again, or even indefinitely.

Keep the channel family-friendly.

Keep the Channel Family-Safe/-Friendly. Keep this in mind in your on-channel discussions and when selecting your quit/part messages. Please do not link to anything which could cause offense or be not safe-for-work or use foul, vulgar or profane language (or acronyms or substitutes which imply foul, vulgar or profane language). Please also avoid graphically-violent, racially-charged and sexually-explicit comments. If you are uncertain whether a word is considered foul language, please be safe and do not use it. If you are uncertain, then it is highly likely that it would offend another.

Use pastebin.

Please use pastebin for pastes longer than 3 lines. There are pastebins available on the web, including ​http://wz2100.pastebin.com and ​http://wz2100.pastebin.ca. Use whichever one suits you.

Be clear and concise and use English whenever possible.

Be clear, concise and try to use English. We prefer the vast majority of conversation to be in English. Most of us speak English so it is generally helpful to keep a common language. That said, if someone asks a question in another language and you can speak that language, do not hesitate to assist the person on the channel or in query. Please speak as plainly as possible. Please do not excessively use hard-to-understand acronyms, "txtspk" or "l33tsp33k". Remember that, although most conversations occur in English, many are not speaking their native language.

Do not bring bots into the channel or abuse any channel bots.

Please do not abuse the channel's bot or bring bots into the channel. If you would like to bring your bot into the channel, you may make your request in a query to staff - be sure to include your rationale. Please do not abuse any bots that are in the channel.

Observe the spirit of the guidelines.

Please observe the spirit of the guidelines. While these guidelines attempt to provide a clear guide for the successful and pleasurable use of the channel, they are an outline only. Please don't use any of the ideas listed here to obfuscate or obstruct the intent or to harass other users.

Respect decisions.

Respect decisions. Staff work hard to be fair and balanced, but may not always resolve issues exactly the way you would. We are always willing to talk with you about any issues you have, but we ask that if you disagree with our actions, to please bring your criticism to us in private. This helps keep the channel on-topic and calm.

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A modified version of the guidelines for #freenode.