Reports of unfriendliness in the irc channel

[Matthew East]

On 17/09/2007, Dennis Kaarsemaker <dennis at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> On ma, 2007-09-17 at 08:22 +0100, Matthew East wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I'm prompted by this bug to start this discussion.
> >
> > https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-website/+bug/139932
> >
> > When we get such reports, I feel that it's important to discuss how
> > they can be avoided, regardless of the specific rights and wrongs,
> > because if people are getting a general impression that the irc
> > channel is unfriendly, then it's a problem we need to solve, because
> > the channel is one of the faces of the Ubuntu community, and
> > significantly affects its reputation.
> >
> > What can be done to ensure that users who are unfriendly are taken
> > aside and asked to improve their behaviour? Is anything currently
> > done? If not, perhaps teams of regulars could be involved in such a
> > task and some guidelines about how this could be done can be drawn up.
>
> Why are you assuming that the issue raised in the bugreport is actually
> true?

As I said in my original email, I'm not, and I actually don't think
it's very helpful to try and get to the bottom of the rights and
wrongs of individual cases. The fact is that we get complaints about
this, and if we continue to promote irc as a help resource on the
website, it's important to ensure that there are procedures in place
which ensure that people are being constantly encouraged to be
friendly and helpful, in accordance with the guidelines that are in
place.

The same would apply to any resource, in the event that complaints
started coming in.

Strictness is easily confused with unfriendliness, sometimes because
it is in fact unfriendly to be strict. If the business of the channel
is an issue, I think we should talk about how that can be improved
too.

-- 
Matthew East
http://www.mdke.org
gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF