proposed rule for IRC

[avery]

i'm not generally in favor of lots of rules and regulations. but it's happened twice now that friends of mine have had extremely sensitive, private, personal information spilled in the public channel by people who have gotten ahold of it by shifty means. in both cases, the operators felt powerless to act without a lot of internal discussion and pontification back and forth.

in most situations, the cautious approach is best. but when there's a risk of sensitive information being given out on the internet, ESPECIALLY in a mixed-ages group dealing with sexual themes, i think it's extremely important that action be taken right away. i propose that mods be given the power to immediately ban someone from the channel if they're giving out personal information on someone. perhaps we could say they get one warning, and if they continue they're instantly banned before they can do any further harm. maybe depending on the situation they could be reinstated after they've formed a written agreement with the mods to respect people's privacy.

what do people think about this idea? i only propose it because it's happened twice now, and it's extremely frustrating to see the moderators fail to take any action in such a critical situation.

[Trevor]

I don't know how I feel about a rule, per se, but I had assumed that making judgment calls in cases like that was part of a moderator's job. Seeing as how it's been consistently allowed to pass it seems to either send a message that it's okay, or something isn't functioning properly. I can think of four instances where it seemed really wrong, although probably two of them are the ones you cite. I've seen others which I'd call either innocuous or slips of the tongue (fingers on keyboard?), so there's a range, which leads back to the judgment thing.

[Peachy]

The problem here is: How do I, as a moderator, even recognize personal information? As you two have seen in the chat today: I had no clue what was going on simply because I did not have the information that was leaked and thus did not understand what had been said.
Obviously, private information should remain private. I always thought that rule was implicit not only in internet chat rooms, but also in real life. We all know the phenomenon of gossip, but how does one battle it? So while I'm all in favor for a rule saying you should not give out personal information, I worry about how to enforce it. Private information means I am not aware of it and cannot recognize it as such in most cases.

This is exactly what happened this morning - I considered what had been said this morning a joke, until people took the time to point it out to me.
I - as a moderator - will always be an external party to the two parties the leak of private information affects. I am unaware of what they have agreed to do and not do. For example, one person may consider her location private information and would not want it to be mentioned in the chat room, others however may have mentioned their own location a dozen times before and don't mind anyone else talking about it. So it's a bit tricky.

As far as this morning's incident is concerned: There was more involved than just the leaking of information. There was also a problem between the two parties involved, and while the victim of the incident has my full sympathy for his personal situation, the two parties also have to work towards resolving their conflicts. A ban will not solve that conflict and may cause either side to find more aggressive means to battle one another.

After seeing what the person who caused the trouble did in the blog section, however, I feel that I should have acted differently. Once again, it's not easy for a moderator to grasp the entire situation in a minute (in my case in between stuffing my face with breakfast), and I generally don't believe in the idea of shooting first and asking questions later. However, the blog entry made me realized someone crossed the line to abusive behavior, which should not be tolerated here.

And finally, let me once again repeat my warning: Think carefully who you trust with your personal information. Make sure the person is not a blabbermouth and knows the value of personal information. And do not under any circumstances give personal information about friends to third parties. The internet is a cruel place, and no moderator can protect you from things like these. It's best to take precautions yourself and choose your friends or contacts carefully!

Peachy

[avery]

i guess what i'm curious about then is what the moderators need, if not a rule, to feel comfortable taking action when action needs to be taken. in both of the situations i'm aware of, the moderators had been informed of what was going on by multiple people. the person giving out the information had been asked nicely to stop several times. and yet the mods still felt that they didn't have enough information or authority to do anything about the situation.

the whole reason we have moderators in the IRC channel is to protect people. luckily they're hardly ever needed since most people in there are pretty civilized. but when someone's private information is being exposed, something needs to be done to protect people. communication is always better than a banhammer, but there's only so far you can get with some people by asking nicely. this is a situation in which the moderators have totally failed to protect people over and over again, and i wonder what they're even doing in there at all if they don't feel like they have the authority to take action in a situation like this. we may as well not even have moderators if they can't protect a person from having their personal information deliberately exposed in a public channel. we need to take measures to ensure that what happened last night never happens again.

[Martin]

That actually is already the case. No one can spill private data about others. But I agree with peachy.

In this case though it's different as I know the situation well here BUT by time I realized it it seemed already over. and I left for a second because I had to do something else. Right when I left stuff broke lose again and peachy was there but didn't know about the situation.

This morning I should have taken more action. It's as simple as that. But that's hindsight, at the moment everything was really logic why I didn't do it but right now I can't even defend that point to myself.

[Darkfinn]

Why don't we just shut down the IRC channel? It's not nearly as popular as flash chat... and I have seen some pretty disgusting and personal information posted in there myself.

[Pojo]

Originally Posted by Darkfinn

Why don't we just shut down the IRC channel? It's not nearly as popular as flash chat... and I have seen some pretty disgusting and personal information posted in there myself.

I don't like that idea at all...Not everyone can use the Flashhchat...And there are actually more people (at least signed in) in IRC...I'm in there now, and there are actually people in there unlike the Flashchat...Just because something doesn't seem as popular, doesn't mean you should just get rid of it...

[Charlie F]

Originally Posted by Darkfinn

Why don't we just shut down the IRC channel? It's not nearly as popular as flash chat...

Haha!
I'm looking forward to replies that will get!


Anyway, on the subject... I think that this proposed rule is just common sense anyway. I wasn't in the chat room at the time, so I can't really comment on how it was handled.

[Peachy]

Originally Posted by Darkfinn

Why don't we just shut down the IRC channel? It's not nearly as popular as flash chat... and I have seen some pretty disgusting and personal information posted in there myself.

Let's shut this whole site down. It's full of disgusting information. And on top, everyone has a profile, and they often give out personal information like age or birthdate.

Peachy

[Martin]

Let's not do that. it may not seem as popular but it is very lively. Also you're judging the whole channel by a couple events, there have happened bad things in the flashchat too. Is that a reason to shut down the flashchat?