Please feel free to adapt, comment and contribute.

Status of #wordpress in the community

1. #wordpress is a valuable resource
   1. Many hours of volunteer work are provided every day
   2. #wordpress provides fast answers to simple questions
   3. Group interaction leads to new development of resources, plug-ins, and more
   4. Personal interaction develops community on a level beyond the software.
2. #wordpress must remain an "unofficial" resource
   1. IRC leaves no permanent record for searching
   2. Traffic waxes and wanes, so availablilty of help is inconsistant.
   3. Unmoderated, unsupervised nature can lead to abuse or other issues
   4. Personal interaction can drown out help requests

Problems with #wordpress which affect the community

1. Lack of permanence
   • Issues resolved in #wordpress may arise again, and solutions may be lost.
2. Potential for abuse
   • We cannot control who enters #wordpress and what they say. There is no way to remove something once it has been said in IRC.
3. Potential for volunteers to feel that their time is not valued.
   • Due to the "unofficial" status, people may feel that forum volounteers are more valued by the community than IRC volunteers.
4. No differentiation between levels of experience
   • Newcomers cannot tell what users have experience in various fields. Newcomers cannot tell who is active in the community and who is "just visiting".

Potential ways to help #wordpress

1. More ops
   • Do not keep op status at all times, but able to be opped and kick/ban users who are abusive
2. +v
   • Voice regular users and volunteers
   1. Rules for getting and losing +v
      Rules would have to be defined and maintianed, and responsiblity would have to be developed for adding people when they met standards or removing them for abuses.
   2. Responsibility for assigning when people enter channel would have to be given to users, or given to a bot.
3. Bots
   1. Identifying bots
      1. pre- or suffix on bot names to identify
         There should be some way of quickly identifying a bot as opposed to a live user.
      2. bot owner identification
         Each bot should have some consitant way of finding who the owner of the bot is.
      3. bot help process
         each bot should have a specific and consistant help command.

Ringmaster's suggestion

1. 1. 1. Like karma, can be assigned by other users
         This removes the issue of defining specific rules and maintaining lists. If a user finds someone helpful they are able to recognize that help.
      2. on-going and cummulative, those who use longer, will have higher rating.
         Higher numbers mean more helpful. Over time numbers will grow in proportion to help provided and time volunteered.
   2. forum bot?
      1. Bot that can direct users to forum (or codex) topics
         A command such as "$forum css" could be issued and the bot would return the 3 most recent CSS posts, or 3 most linked css posts or something along those lines.
   3. Code of Ethics
      1. List of users who agree to follow code of ethics within #wordpress
         1. purely voluntary
         2. more formalized self-policing
      2. Topics
         1. no intentionally false information
         2. suspend personal chat when it interferes with support
         3. direct questions (and answers) to forum and codex when possible.
         4. report and deal with abusive users immediately.

Codex IRC page

1. Acknowledge nature of IRC
   1. IRC is unmoderated.
   2. IRC is open to anyone, good or bad.
   3. People on IRC are talking, less filter than on forum. Discussions can become childish. If you are offended, tell the offenders, tell channel ops?, tell Freenode IRCops, Post to forum.
   4. IRC is not permanent. If you get new info, post to forum. That way it is available to you later and others who may have the same questions.
2. Acknowledge IRC volunteers
   1. They are volunteers, not obligated to help you, although they'll usually try.
   2. You get what you pay for (TANSTAFL)
      (Okay, this is poorly worded. Payment is in the form of respect and participation and helping other people when you're able).
   3. Social atmosphere helps make people more willing to help, so accepting off-topic discussion is part of using the channel.
3. move items that are currently in the channel's "topic" to codex page (docs, themes, plugins, pastebin, etc.), and have chanserv message point users to codex page. "Please read codex.wordpress.org/IRC_HowItWorks for #wordpress before participating in this channel." Don't Ask to ask, just ask.

--Morydd 01:56, 24 Jul 2005 (UTC)