The ethics of irc: its ircops, channel ops, users, and its purpose.
The lacking of any ethical standard on irc seems to have left if it was even indeed present in the first place.
Perhaps in the 80′s when irc was invented there was some ethic to it and the vast majority of it’s users. I am too young to have ever experienced irc or computers at such an age and time to rightly justify if this was indeed the case and scenario.
Today though, the first thing you should know about irc (let let alone the world but i’ll try to stay away from that topic) is that it lacks anything remotely resembling ethic and rationality. The majority of users on irc talk on subjects relational to meme’s, dongs, lolcats, and goatse assholes. That probably won’t mean much to anybody because if you’re reading this in the first place the likelihood is that you are one of thoes complete and utter fucking morons. It’s not just users by any standard that fit into the notation of complete and utter unethical ignorant morons. It’s the vast majority of the ircops and channel owners.
This post isn’t going to be anywhere near as long as I would like it to be. I’m going to give two examples, one of a channel owner, one of some ircops. They should help sum things up for anyone that just happens to be on a rare rationality level that i seem to be, and can clearly conclude that oranges are not apples, or even peaches for that matter.
Recently I was banned from the channel #bash on the opensource freenode network. The reason for the placed ban was that I was ‘off topic’. Indeed the channel topic could conclude that no off topic conversation was to happen — problem one. I decided to post a brief line to the channel that was off topic. I got banned. Sadly I do not even remember the channel op’s name to put him in the tag for blog post, but it’s rather irrelevant at this point and i’d rather just try to spread the idea of why a channel denoted no off topic conversation is the wrong choice to make for a channel, let alone enforce on a user that was namely participating on topic the vast majority of the time.
Channels are on irc to unite people, they are not there to be picky about who they unite and they are not there to wage power games all day long and be rather unproductive. Perhaps you’re an idiot and you’re thinking ‘well why don’t you fucking go somewhere else if you don’t like channel rules’. I don’t go somewhere else because there really isn’t a channel in *existence* on the topic of bash of any size what so ever compared to that of the one on freenode. It is a monopoly of sorts. ‘well why don’t you just fucking talk on topic’. Well, the reason is that i’m often in a situation where I like to get ideas across and converse with people that are concentrated on a certain thing, in a certain hobby, or a specific subcategory of one. Just like I might like to do in real life. I don’t have the pleasure of being able to do this in real life in any fashion. The laptop, sadly, is at my disposal and it’s what I have access to. Rational off topic conversation between members of a channel can honestly only lead to a better community for the channel and the overall better state and being of everyone. This channel op explicitly explained his idea that off topic conversation can and will not work, and will only lead to spam. I rightly informed him that it seems to work just fine in ##c, #perl, #awk, ##sed, and #asm, amongst surely most others. When the channel is idle people use it, as they should, as nothing is wrong in an idle channel. When something comes up on topic they pertain to it.
When I say nothing is wrong in an idle channel i mean that to every extent in the context that i’m trying to explain how an ‘open’ network and channel is the ‘correct’ network and channel. I do in no way want a channel owner justifying that he or she does not want to hear something from a user for me, leading to him or her deducing that the user needs to be removed. That is going to far, I want to be able to choose who I listen to and who I do not listen to. I don’t want to see bans made for people swearing, because we’re not all big boys and girls and we can’t hear swearwords and don’t use them as they don’t feel good to use in most circumstances. Perhaps they shouldn’t but that is the way the world is designed. If you don’t want to hear a swear word then sure, ignore it in your little brain or set an ignore manually. Do not deduce that nobody else wants to hear what that user hash to say or that the user is less intelligent than you for simply using swearwords, and that they should not be listened to. Get past the swears, some people are more productive using them. If you’re less productive hearing them, don’t deduce that everyone in the channel also is and feel you must set a ban.
If you can’t set an ignore yourself then you need to start using yahoo chat and get off irc and quit sitting around waiting to place a ban or a kill, let alone that you should be in an position to have control over potentially the largest channel that exists, in the entire universe as far as anyone knows, on a particular subject. Ops are rather pointless other than for setting a channel topic. All they cause is mass unproductive tension, games, and nonsense, amongst other things.
The comment i get from most any user when they’re doing something completely irrational, wrong, unethical, immoral, stupid, ignorant, and most likely hostile, is that I take irc way too importantly. The fact is that it’s pretty much all I have during the day, and my life, and existence. Perhaps you find that sad, or wrong, i really don’t care, I have my reasons and they are beyond this blog post. The fact lies to be, most people, ircops, channel ops, etc, are not going to ever mature and quit playing around until they sit behind a wall for a year or better and start to take everything in life serious and understand what kind of position they could be in and that at one point everything is going to count and matter. Perhaps for alot of people this will never happen. The fact lies that the statement is bullshit anyways, if you have to turn into a complete and utter fucking unethical and ignorant moron just because you’re behind a keyboard and on irc, it just goes to show what kind of person you really are. I don’t have that need in any way what so ever. The idea wouldn’t even cross my mind, let alone that i would actually practice it as most irc users do.
My next example shows the complete and utter 10 year old behavior of possibly the most known irc network of all time, and it’s ircops. efnet. I don’t know how these people choose their ircops but they really don’t have the slightest idea on how a computer even works. I feel the vast majority of ircops on efnet, let alone other places, get their status based on the idea that they are a friend of someone, a brother, a child, a spouse, you name it. From there it just branches off, another user gets the person that actually runs the server to op another user because that server owner is so lonely he’s just looking for friend or knows the person in real life and the person in real life is some hot-shit and yet the server owner is just a geeky server admin.
Today I was rather trolling in my own non harmful way of trolling (completely different from what the term means and how it applies to just about anyone else on the internet). As a clone user I often act playful with named ‘WiNkY’ I messaged to the channel #fw on efnet something to the sort of [cyan background, black foreground]/!\/!\ NEWS ALERT: yes, hello, winky here /!\/!\
WiNkY had been completely idol from the channel for hours, had never been given any sort of “warning” (which would be bullshit anyways but at least in some way excusable) for doing anything previously wrong. The channel was not claiming to be color free in any form. Nothing in the topic. Nobody saying it was. No channel mode to set it so.
Instantly WiNkY was killed by an ircop named ‘ayzee’. I tried having a conversation with this ircop but he/it/she was unable to understand in any fashion that their idea of banning a user for using colors, let alone killing them off the network when a simple ban could have been placed (is efnet color free now?) was the wrong thing to do, unethical, immoral, stupid, ignorant, unjustified, and about any other word you wanta throw in there.
To make things worse I went into #efnet and asked them how they choose their ops, if they pick them based on the notation that it’s their 12 year old brother, or what. And explained that the ircop named ‘ayzee’ had placed a kill near instantly for the simple use of color in a line sent to a channel, and to give their mature ircop a round of applause.
Not only did nobody find this in any way wrong, but I was banned from the #efnet channel by a user named ‘physher1′ (who also goes by the alias ‘phisher1′). I don’t know if anyone sees anything remotely wrong with this notation?
How stupid can you be? How immature can you be to just kill a user? I honestly never hit that lacking level of maturity in all of my life, honestly. Even at the age of 11 the idea to do such a thing would not cross my mind. At that age the general consensus is that I wanted to make everything work for the best of everybody, spread love, be loved, enjoy life, and so on. I just could not have that idea, let alone practice it. It’s beyond me, it’d only hurt myself to do such a thing. It’d go against my ways and ethical standard of life and be incorrect in every possible way. Yet these people are ircops on perhaps the most known irc network of all time. Yes I was trolling but one of the major reasons for trolling is to see the reaction. Yes I knew color was not going to be liked (though i honestly don’t know why, I just know people tend to follow each other one this). But the ircop did not know that, as far as he was concerned it was just a user that had no idea color was not allowed, was not being harmful in anyway (which I wasn’t, just having fun, seeing what would be said, etc) and in general just trying to be nice and get along with people and enjoys the prettiness of irc colors (which i do). But it only goes to show how the situation was handled in #efnet.
I guess that’s ‘it for now, i’m surely going to want to add something to this all. But please know that i’m not even entirely doing this for you, based on what i have seen already of you i can’t care enough about you to write all this for you. I do this for me, because I have to exist in this world, whether i like it or not (which I don’t). Please to not clutter up my existence with any more complete and utter shit and <insert all thoes other words here>.
After the ban from #efnet i did a bit of spamming to the channel and flooding. It’s not beyond me. They are ruining part of my existence why should I not ruin part of theirs? Yes it makes me feel better. Yes it’s ethical. Yes it’s correct. If a crack head comes into your house looking for money and rapes and kills your 12 year old daughter, you kill him. It’s ethical. It’s correct. And it makes you feel better. Even murder can be ethical and justified given the world permits it. This one does.
Sorry about the bad sentence structure and grammar (actually i don’t give a fuck, it’s not something i should be sorry about or care about what so ever compared to what you’re doing and have done and will do). Oh great so you know english, too bad you had to completely sacrifice ethics and rationality to do so. I’d rather you not know english at all and at least be a rational, ethical, human being, you knowing english has no effect what so ever on my existence. It should in no way be priority over ethics, moral, rationality, and everything else i’m trying to describe.
Shrug, just shrug it off. That’s what you. If you think I’m talking to you I am. If you had the correct rationality and ethic level you would perfectly well deduce that i’m on your side, and want you to keep doing what you’re doing for the best of existence, or until we can get to the best of existence.
My goal is to make the the undebatable de facto standard on irc use. It’ll never happen. Though there is no excuse, and there is no debate. When anyone wants to help me setup a truely open network, feel free to leave me an email. Or go about it yourself and let me know you did, as I don’t need to help, as me caring who hosts it defeats the entire point. This will never happen either (or at least it will never become popular). The world agrees apples are oranges and absolutely loves everything about the world and the system already in place, and really doesn’t have any interest in changing it to be correct, rational, sane, safe, etc.
Guess that’s it. Hope I gave some people some ideas.
–n0ah
(:
DDDDDDDD
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