Forum:Our own IRC channel?

Forums: Index > Village Dump > Our own IRC channel?

Note: This topic has been unedited for 3503 days. It is considered archived - the discussion is over.

Some have discussed the possibility of our site having its own IRC channel. I think we should discuss pros and cons then vote on it as a community.

Pros

• It would be a place where members of our community could get together, collaborate on articles, and get to know each other, and even share occasional external links of interest (like links to favorite youtube videos, and the kind of things that get shared on Facebook).
• When someone adds a comment it appears instantly and you don't have to refresh a page like on a standard uncy forum or talk page
• If enough of the admins agree to hang out there, it could be a place to get hold of them more easily. For blocked editors, it would be the only way to get hold of them at all, short of going to the fork or its IRC channel; editing one's own talk page while blocked is impossible, and Special:EmailUser is disabled, which eliminates the two usual venues for unblock requests.

Cons

• Rogue users could join IRC and post shock links, trolling other users until they were kicked from the channel.

  Or perhaps they will be regarded as funny, rather than kicked (#uncyclopedia)

• Rogue users might spam the IRC channel, making it nearly unusable temporarily until they were kicked.

  Or spamming the channel might become a tradition (#uncyclopedia)

• Users from the other site might join the IRC channel and try to use it as a recruiting tool, evangelizing the other site to those who already have made up their mind to stay here exclusively.
• Users might try to use the channel to badmouth other users or admins. Venting is one thing, continually spewing dislike for others is another, and poisons the community environment.

  We could have an "Report Abuse" option

  Like the !ops or !admin commands (stalkwords) on #wikipedia-en and similar channels?

• Admins from this site would have to patrol the IRC channel to keep the above behaviors from getting out of hand and to keep users civil to each other. This would take time away from patrolling the main site.

  Having a stalkword to ping them when they are needed could lessen the amount of time they had to spend there.

• Wikia already has its own IRC channel on freenode, we could use that one temporarily if need be instead of creating a new channel.
• Few of the users from this site would actually use the IRC channel, resulting in it being empty, or nearly empty most of the time. An empty channel is a quiet channel. Quiet channels are boring.

  And not useful for bugging admins about what they need to do, which is another popular and non-social-clubby aspect of IRC channels

Enter your thoughts or additional pros and cons above. -- Simsilikesims(♀GUN) Talk here. 18:56, June 29, 2014 (UTC)

Voting

• Nay. -- Simsilikesims(♀GUN) Talk here. 18:56, June 29, 2014 (UTC)
• For. Sir TheWikiMan026 CUN,UmP, (Chatter) 19:14, June 29, 2014 (UTC)
• For Useful for communicating ideas. Also useful for recruiting itself. Communicate to newcomers how to make their articles better in real time. The cons listed are pretty much realities of any IRC channel, thats what channel OPs are for, to keep stuff like that under control. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Frosty (talk • contribs) diff

  Unsigned votes from admins ought to count for something, no? Not that it's me who's to say, mind you. ❦ Llwy-ar-lawr • talk • contribs • 18:27 8 September 2014

• For (in theory). There is shared resource at Wikia but isn't IRC and is really open for all their sites and not very useful for Uncyclopedia. An IRC channel would need monitoring and would be necessity set up to prevent aggressive trolling/bullying. --RomArtus*Imperator ITRA (Orate) ® 08:59, July 1, 2014 (UTC)

  You may have forgotten, and TheWikiMan026 doesn't care to research, that we had an IRC channel. The people who run it pestered Wikia to sign it over to them, and Wikia pestered us to sign off on the decision, which took several rounds. In voting For, I presume you will step forward to ask Sannse to explain why we now want one where we didn't before. Spıke Ѧ 13:02 2-Jul-14

  So? maybe the peope o Uncyclopedia want one now. After all Unycopedia is a democracy Sir TheWikiMan026 CUN,UmP, (Chatter) 13:34, July 2, 2014 (UTC)

• Against. This is a humor wiki. If TheWikiMan026 wants a social club, he knows where to go. OP states, "Some have discussed the possibility of our site having its own IRC channel." In fact, TheWikiMan026 opened a Forum, I moved it to his talk page and told him it was discussed and disposed of less than a year ago. Simsie reopened it on his behalf. She and Anton199 believe it is not fair to expect him to have known about the old Forum, but it is eminently fair by now to expect him to learn about the history before taking our time on a new broadcast. I will not be bound by a For vote to stop patrolling and writing and lobby Wikia for a new channel so that TheWikiMan026 can hold court and trolls can continue distracting our real editors. Spıke Ѧ 16:05 1-Jul-14
• Go Forth (although I won't use it, didn't use the old one). I see no reason why not to and it's just another communication tool for people who like it. Me, I stick to homing pigeons (seriously, I put glue on my hands and stick to them). Aleister 16:29 1-7-14
• For. If anyone wants it, let them have it. Sir ScottPat (converse) VFH UnS NotM WotM WotY 13:41, July 7, 2014 (UTC)
• For. Because there's no reason to be like an ED newfag and refuse the members who want a decidedly swaggish IRC channel for the site. Revolutionary, Anti-Bensonist, and TYATU Boss Uncyclopedian Meganew (Chat) (Care for a peek at my work?) (SUCK IT, FROGGY!) 17:50, September 8, 2014 (UTC)
• Against. If we're still voting--which we may not be--I ought to add my vote too. There are an impressive number of disadvantages, and the only advantage I can see is the possibility of appealing blocks, and in my experience most of the people who appeal blocks are either being stupid or acting in bad faith (or both). (Geeky acts in bad faith so much that on #wookieepedia you can't even say his name without getting kicked. That's another kettle of sardines, though.) Other things that could be done on IRC can be done as easily on the wiki, and probably more easily due to the absence of probably most editors from the channel. ❦ Llwy-ar-lawr • talk • contribs • 18:27 8 September 2014

  That said, I still like the idea of an IRC channel--not the idea of a mindless social club, but of a place where you can ask random questions about the site without worrying about where they should go or if someone will see them; where you can get feedback or file admin requests in a much smaller amount of time (though with Spike working at the rate he does, that point may not be valid); where you can throw article ideas around in real time. I have reason to believe that such a place existed once, well before my time, but it will probably never exist again.
  Separately, I seem to have access to change access flags on ##uncyclopedia, so I could remove the flags of anyone questionable if need be. I could also remove my own flags if I'm considered questionable, which I probably am. (No, I didn't ask for them; I suddenly found out I had them.) ❦ Llwy-ar-lawr • talk • contribs • 13:34 17 September 2014

• Totally opposed There's no logging, so no record of what's said, unlike on-site forums. It's off-Wiki which means you've got a place where non-contributors can gather and <whatever> which is not a benefit. And there's no need for it -- the talk pages and forums on the site provide more than adequate communication. The only problem I've heard articulated with on-site communication is it may be slower in some cases than using an IRC channel. But I simply cannot see the need for blazing speed in handling "You blocked me and you suck!" requests, nor even "Someone's spamming something and needs blocking!" alarms. And without a 24/7 copy of Spike (or Famine or someone else of similar bent) who will patrol it, it's going to be hard to keep it from deteriorating into the sort of guy's locker room which defines the current #uncyc channel, and we sure don't need that. Snarglefoop (talk) 12:59, September 22, 2014 (UTC)

  It's not so much a need for blazing speed as an inability to file unblock requests at all. See #Pros for my reasoning, which I have just laid out in the open. ❦ Llwy-ar-lawr • talk • contribs • 13:30 22 September 2014

  Wait -- you can't edit your own talk page while blocked? That doesn't seem right. Snarglefoop (talk) 13:32, September 22, 2014 (UTC)

  Yes, has been the default setting that a blocked user cannot access their own user page. I have left a wikia link on my user page.--RomArtus*Imperator ITRA (Orate) ® 12:06, September 23, 2014 (UTC)

Result

FOR
4

AGAINST
4

Score: 0

UnSignpost

We should have an add on UnSignpost about this topic as there is too litle votes to have a inal answer --Sir TheWikiMan026 CUN,UmP, (Chatter) 11:14, August 17, 2014 (UTC)

Please write one and I will display it. We can put it in the banner section (top of every page) as well. Sir ScottPat (converse) VFH UnS NotM WotM WotY 11:23, August 17, 2014 (UTC)

Moving forward with the proposal

From the votes made so far (6), we have a score of 2 over in favour of the motion. I would say this would be enough to go forward with the idea. Any suggestions on how we make this IRC channel? Sir ScottPat (converse) VFH UnS NotM WotM WotY 12:49, August 19, 2014 (UTC)

We have one: ##uncyclopedia (not to be confused with #uncyclopedia, which belongs to the other site). But we need someone to survey it, to make sure there's no cyberbullying there. Anton (talk) 13:00, August 19, 2014 (UTC)

Oh, and UnSignpost also has its own channel: #unsignpost. Anton (talk) 13:01, August 19, 2014 (UTC)

OK. No one will take the responsibility of surveying that place 24/7 I'm guessing. Is that what the spoon does? Also do we share the #unsignpost with the spoon? Also does anyone currently use either of those IRCs? Thanks. Sir ScottPat (converse) VFH UnS NotM WotM WotY 13:03, August 19, 2014 (UTC)

Yes. No. No. Anton (talk) 13:21, August 19, 2014 (UTC)

Clearer response: no one's using the UnSignpost one, so we don't share with the spoon/fork. And no one's using the ##uncyclopedia one either. And there is always an admin or more on the spoon channel. Anton (talk) 13:23, August 19, 2014 (UTC)

Whoa! I demand a recount! The current net looks more like 0 than +2 to me, with eight votes cast, and that sure doesn't seem like a ringing endorsement. Snarglefoop (talk) 13:05, September 22, 2014 (UTC)

I'm afraid I took the vote to be closed at the time as no one had voted for a while. Anyways the matter was kind of settled on various talk pages that actually Puppy's response below swayed everybody to think it was a bad idea. If I could be bothered I'd change my vote to against now but the matter was settled so there's no point. Sir ScottPat (converse) VFH UnS NotM WotM WotY 18:12, September 22, 2014 (UTC)

Ah ... I see ... so a month behind, I am, as so often seems to happen... So it goes. Snarglefoop (talk) 18:20, September 22, 2014 (UTC)

Puppy's response from a previous forum

Anton's link to a previous forum on the topic (admittedly under slightly different circumstances) contains a good explanation by Puppy of why we shouldn't have an IRC channel, which at the time persuaded me to vote against:

"No fucking way. I've always been uncomfortable with on-wiki discussion being held off-wiki where there is no record of the discussion being held, no minutes taken, and the decisions made there being held as “binding” when only a subset of the community have been informed that a decision is being held. This is what has lead to a single community being split into two previously. I also have no faith in the motivation for the creation of this channel, given that it's being created by someone who has been banned from a similar channel elsewhere, which leads me to believe it's being created in poor faith. The justification of “I didn't want someone else to do it” when the name is not that special - there are plenty of ways this could have been done that could have avoided it being sniped. The fact that a self-aggrandising, power hungry but otherwise unfruitful member of the community is going to be there in any position of power does not make it a draw card. There is an ability to create a separate online identity with a new email address, and using that identity to create the channel - meaning the creator could hand that password over to another party and give up all ownership. This would have removed any concern over ownership while still securing a name that is not that special. Given the channel's creator's actions at other channels, and behaviour at similar wikis, along with his behaviour here, with yet another huge justification for what appears to be acting in bad faith, I see no reason why this should be supported.

Of course, if the vote was put forward with no “look at me” justification, and was simply the question as to wether we need a dedicated chat channel, my response would have been different. I would still have voted against, but I wouldn't have viewed the instigation of it as a vain power grab by an embittered child."

Sir ScottPat (converse) VFH UnS NotM WotM WotY 13:14, August 19, 2014 (UTC)

Puppy's points are still valid and I agree with them. I know it would be nice to have some other way of real time communication but that does require 24/7 checking and could easy be a drama stoker as an IRC channel appears to attact/encourage. --RomArtus*Imperator ITRA (Orate) ® 13:27, August 19, 2014 (UTC)

I seem to have arrived late to the party. I realise I'm not allowed to vote at this point, but I would like to say that I'm inclined to agree with Puppy and Spike. ❦ Llwy-ar-lawr • talk • contribs • 22:31, August 22, 2014 (UTC)

Scott, 6 votes out of over 3 million less than 1,000 active Uncyclopedians is too little to state anything. Sir TheWikiMan026 CUN,UmP, (Chatter) 17:59, August 24, 2014 (UTC)

Opinions count more than votes and we've had more cons than pros. Concerning votes, six is enough. We feature articles when the score is 6/0 and delete them, when it's 0/6. And, yes, it's probably less than 1,000. Anton (talk) 21:23, August 24, 2014 (UTC)

Also there is a difference between active and regular users. Only regular users regularly participate in community discussions and there's about 10 at max of them. Sir ScottPat (converse) VFH UnS NotM WotM WotY 17:19, August 30, 2014 (UTC)