python admin abuse complaint

[Xah Lee]

2010-02-04

Hi Steve,

thank you for the reply.

I appreciate that you taking this more seriously than normal
newsgroups postings. In fact, for this complaint, the response you
made is all i asked for.

I have a lot things to say about the various political struggle that
one sees everyday in just about every communication channels that are
predominantly young male groups, of relatively few people, in online
posting forums, ircs, online massive multiplayer games... as you may
know, the quarrels, accusations, bans, happen every hour.

But to be concrete and constructive, i would suggest that in
freenode's python irc channel:

• when a admin bans someone, the admin needs to tell the person the
reason, and not in some rude way. (a single sentence will do.)

• The list of ban'd person's names, the reason for banning, and the
name of admin who ban'd them, should be public. (irc already provides
means for this that allows admins to annotate in the ban list.) In
particular, if you are going to ban someone by ip address, make sure
the person's handle (or preferably real life name), be listed together
with it. (again, this needs not elaborate. A single sentence will do,
e.g. “repeatedly asking same question”, “continously raising
controversial issues”, “refused to use paste bin when requested” will
do. Again, be as precise in description as possible. For example,
“ban'd for trolling”, “annoying others”, are not a meaningful reason.)

• additionally, i would suggest that bans be temporary. The following
period seems a good start: 5 min ban, 1 hour ban, 1 day ban, 1 week
ban, 1 month ban. Each can be executed according to severity per the
admin's judgement. There should be no permanent ban, unless it's
machine generated commercial spam.

Thank you.

For anyone reading this thread and interested in my opinions, i have
written many essays related to this and netiquette. Many of which
detail other similar incidences that i personally experienced, such as
freenode's irc ban in #emacs channel. If you are interested, they can
be found on my website, search for “ban xah lee”.

  Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/

☄


On Feb 2, 2:23 pm, "Steve Holden, Chairman, PSF" <chair... at python.org>
wrote:
> Xah Lee wrote:
> > This is a short complaint on admin abuse on #python irc channel on
> > freenode.net.
>
> > Here's a log:
>
> > 2010-02-02
>
> > (12:11:57 PM) The topic for #python is: NO LOL |http://pound-python.org/
> > | It's too early to use Python 3.x | Pasting > 3 lines? Pastebin:
> >http://paste.pocoo.org/| Tutorial:http://docs.python.org/tut/| FAQ:
> >http://effbot.org/pyfaq/| New Programmer? Readhttp://tinyurl.com/thinkcspy
> > | #python.web #wsgi #python-fr #python.de #python-es #python.tw
> > #python.pl #python-br #python-jp #python-nl #python-ir #python-
> > offtopic
> > (12:12:00 PM) _habnabit: pr100, I replaced it with str.startswith,
> > actually.
> > (12:12:01 PM) jarray52: Jarray
> > (12:12:11 PM) _habnabit: jarray52, yes, you are.
> > (12:12:16 PM) xahlee: is hash={} and hash.clean() identical?
> > (12:12:18 PM) eggy_: OhnoesRaptor: getting sockets (and event loops
> > etc) right is quite tricky
> > (12:12:21 PM) OhnoesRaptor: I know how to do sockets right eggy, just
> > wondering whats up with the python verison :D
> > (12:12:24 PM) mode (+o dash) by ChanServ
> > (12:12:30 PM) You have been kicked by dash: (No.)
>
> > ---------------
>
> > I have not been using irc for the past about 2 year. (possibly perhaps
> > 2 times in i think #web channel) In particular, i have not been in in
> > freenode.net's #python channel. I don't know who is dash.
>
> >   Xah
> > ∑http://xahlee.org/
>
> > ☄
>
> Frankly, Xah Lee, I find it ironic that you see fit to complain about
> abuse of the IRC channel when you have apparently felt free to ignore
> the many complaints about your behavior on this and other newsgroups
> over many years.
>
> "As ye sew, so shall ye reap". I imagine that your reputation has
> preceded you, and that dash (whom I *do* know) is simply looking to keep
> a well-known nuisance from bothering the rest of the users on the channel.
>
> For the present my sympathies are all with him. The PSF will, however,
> investigate this issue and I will report back to you off-list in due course.
>
> regards
>  Steve
> --
> Steve Holden        Chairman, Python Software Foundation
> The Python Community Conference  http://python.org/psf/
> PyCon 2010 Atlanta Feb 19-21        http://us.pycon.org/
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