Not a lot to say about this proposal. I can't think of anything that'd be on topic for #help that wouldn't also be on-topic for #site17, and it'd be one less channel for us to keep an eye on.

To reiterate the point made in the first thread, politics and sensitive discussion is a persistent bugbear for operators. Political discussion is frequently not quite bad enough to stop order without making the userbase feel we are acting unreasonably, while still bad enough to require constant operative eyes on chat. It is, to whit, frequently infuriating and exhausting. As the primaries have gotten under way, and looking forward to the general election, I foresee this only getting worse, and more frequently overwhelming 19 to the detriment of both our chatstaff and to the many users who do not come to 19 for such discussions.

This is why I am proposing #site20.

#site20 will act as an overflow for political (or otherwise sensitive at the discretion of chatstaff) discussions. It will be solely used for overflow, and will be muted at all other times¹.

A running presence in #site20 from any individual member of chatstaff would not be mandatory, but would be greatly appreciated by the team.

In function, if an operator wishes to remove a political discussion from 19 that is not bad enough to stop order, they can op order it to be moved to #site20. Further discussion on the topic in 19 may be treated as a violation of a stop order.

Any operator who moves a conversation to #site20 will be responsible for opping that conversation, or otherwise ensuring that someone else does.

Channel roles shall be identical to 19, hops in 19 are hops in 20, ops in 19 ops in 20, and so on.

All rules and policies of #site19 will be applied to #site20².

#site19 and #site20 shall be identical for disciplinary purposes. A ban from 19 is a ban from 20 (and vice versa), an offense in 20 is considered an offense in 19.

Site-chat disciplinary bridge shall apply equally to 20 as it does to 19.

I am only looking for input from chatstaff, including half-operators.

e: Clarified some disciplinary matters.

/join #sssc supersecr3tp@ssword
or
/ns ajoin add #sssc supersecr3tp@ssword

If someone needs they key that hasn't been around in a while they'll just ask in 17 or PM someone they know is in there.

If there are no strenuous objections I'll make this happen some time this week.

While banning political discussion would solve the issue, a problem comes in in that these discussions are usually not inherently problematic. And a ban on political discussion itself would be simultaneously overbroad and likely lead to uneven, subjective, and perhaps even biased enforcement.

The current solution is a flat halt on discussion once it becomes rude or is deemed to overwhelm chat. I believe it would be fairer to our users to offer an overflow chat to redirect these discussions towards. Current "precedent" is a temporary room is created, but that has… literally never been done by an op issuing an order, in my experience. An official place for this to go would lead to clarity for our users and operators and honestly be fairer on users involved in discussions they believe interesting and important.

This room should operate under the exact same ruleset as 19¹, and have the exact same chatstaff. Discipline will be shared between this chat and 19.

This is not a final proposal by any means. Points of discussion I am interested in hearing (in addition to "is this something chatstaff is interested in pursuing") are:

• Whether the room should be permanently open to all discussion, open to self-redirected discussion on "overwhelming" topics, or solely open at operator discretion following an op order.
• Whether chatstaff presence in the room is mandatory or optional for each operator.

As this is a chat matter, I am only seeking input from chatstaff, including half-operators.

Thoughts?

So what Internet outreach is requesting is:

• Input on creating a test server recognized as official by staff to see if this idea is viable.
• For staff considering this to keep an open mind. We’re not trying to leap before we look. This would be a test server with a soft opening which we would report back on whether or not it’s a good idea.
• Consideration for our ability to engage with large portions of the community like most of the international branches and SCPdeclassified, all of whom primarily use Discord.

What we are not asking for:

• Permission to replace IRC
• To go whole hog and make/promote an official Discord on a wide scale out of the gate. We want to soft open a server and see what problems arise and how the server runs to test the viability of having one in the long term.
• For all staff to be in favor of Discord immediately.

If you don’t think we should have an official Discord, for whatever reason, that’s fine. But please allow us to at least try. If it’s not something that works out, we can stop doing it. But if it becomes a conduit through which we can be more in touch with our community that can’t be anything but a good thing. Please keep an open mind and let us at least make an attempt at this.

Our plan is to create a small server based on how the International SCP Discord is set up. Voice chat would be disabled. We’ve got a number of staff members and moderators of existing Discord servers volunteering to help moderate it so manpower is not currently expected to be an issue. For those not able to access Discord, we’re not intending to replace IRC so it won’t be a mandatory means of community engagement. But for some folks, Discord is easier than IRC. My feeling is that community engagement can only be a good thing and having additional avenues to achieve that can’t hurt.

Backseat modding consists of actions such as non-staff acting as staff or ops in 17, offering incorrect or false help, or interrupting staff when they're busy helping or dealing with a problem. Peanut gallery comments involve non-staff users butting in during disc action and ban appeals with unnecessary or unhelpful comments.

Both have been dealt with by kicks or such in the past but the purpose of this thread is to formalise the procedure. After discussion in opchat and SSSC there is apparently consensus to start handing out 24-hour bans for the offenses. Discussion and suggestions can be had in here and if no other proposals are offered within a week it'll become standardised.

Personally, I'm a little iffy on having the widget there, mainly because it might negatively impact our mobile users who keep that page open in a tab or separate window for reference. Also, there's a lot of stuff on that guide already, plus there are some site members who just prefer not to use the chat at all.

Does anyone think it would be worthwhile having dedicated pages for the staff-run chatrooms (#site17, #thecritters, etc.) on the mainsite, sort of like we have on O5? We could also have a hub page that would link to all those chats.

As you all probably know, #site17 functions as a combination crit and staff help channel. I, and others, feel that it should be reverted back to a staff help channel only. There's a number of reasons and issues behind this.

• Crit can get in the way of staff functions, such as chat ban appeals- this happens frequently, with users butting it to ask for critique during a ban appeal, or other important discussion. It also happens the other way round; ongoing crit sometimes has to be stopped or moved in order to hold a ban appeal or complaint. If we made #site17 staff help only, we'd get rid of this problem.
• We have #thecritters now, which functions as an additional critique channel. There's no point having three rooms for critique, so we can simply remove that from #site17 and boost the awareness and usage of #thecritters. If I remember correctly, Zyn has in past stated she would be fine with this assuming #thecritters got more ops- ChaoSera suggests making all Site or Forum Crit Team members op in there, and I think that sounds pretty sensible. We can list #thecritters on the chat guide and the #site17 topic, and tell users seeking for crit about it.

As far as I know this has seen almost entirely positive support from a number of staff members in SSSC, but if anyone has complaints or suggestions this is the place to voice them. So, thoughts?

RULE ONE: Censor the name of Super Secret Staff Chat when posting snippets. This is because SSSC's True Name is a closely kept secret which no one knows, anywhere, ever. (No, but for reals, censor it out.)
RULE TWO: Don't share SSSC-only information without specific permission, including personal info about staff members or private staff convos.
RULE THREE: If you don't know if something's okay to snippet, ask. If it's really borderline, ask an admin or Discipline Team member. If it's sheer goofiness it's 99% likely to be fine. (Our dick jokes aren't going to bring down the site. Really.)

COMMENCE HILARITY:

Posting this in advance of the chat meeting because, essentially, this is the last call for objections, and I want both ops who can't attend to meeting & other staff to be able to weigh in on this. Leave comments, concerns, etc.

"But Eskobar, we already tried that with #area14 and #editorsdesk!" the crowd screams.

Yeah, I know. This time, though, we have teams of staff who are specifically required to keep up forum and site critique; I propose those team members who spend time in chat also be asked to lurk in this new channel as a part of their duties. (Obviously nobody can be forced to go into chat if they don't already.) The channel can also be open generally to users who want to help out with such critique, as I like to see volunteers help out with it. We can redirect draft discussions specifically from 19 to this new room to keep it populated.

I also specifically want this channel to have the exact same op structure as either 19 or 17, since those op systems seem to work fine and there's more faith in that group's neutrality. A possible modification could be giving higher authority to critique team members so newbies know who the more trusted critics are, but even that isn't necessary.

Thoughts?

Tox has been permanently banned from secret staff chat. The ban was made with agreement of two other administrators and other staff.

Tox is not being considered for senior staff at this time. If Tox is considered for staff again, this ban will be rescinded (for obvious reasons), but otherwise it's permanent.

Over the years, *super secret staff chat* has gone through many evolutions, from just a place for the cool kids to hang out, to the official Senior Staff chat, and, well, now it's going through one again. As many of you know, we're working on a whole lot of shake up for the site, the staff, and such, and one of those involves what we use the SSSC for.

As of January first, 2014, we're going to ask that the only people in *SSSC* are either Staff, ops, or staff-in-waiting. If you do not know if you are Staff-In-waiting, please contact Troy, as he is the Admin with the lists.. If you do not fall into these categories, you will not be welcome in chat, no matter how much we've enjoyed your presence over the years. If you have any questions, please PM Bright, Troy, or Moose, as those three have been working on this.

People may be re-invited at Admin discretion. We hope everyone continues to enjoy the site, and all the new stuff we're doing!

-Bright, using the royal we.

This is open on an experimental basis, and all rules & structure may potentially change as we figure this out.

RULES

• Only questions / discussion with staff are allowed; general chat is kicked to 19.
  • This is somewhat ambiguous, so we might find a better way of stating things. Currently the topic just says that excess general chat will be booted on staff discretion.
• Beyond that, #site19 rules apply.
• +R is not on, because, well, the only point of this chatroom is to talk to staff, and all staff have the power to kickban people in this room. If some moron or two comes in and starts blabbing when no staff are around, they're not disrupting chat because there's no chat to disrupt. Staff can temporarily put +R on later if necessary. (Or even permanently, if that's what we want to do.)
• We may also use this for more formal Q&A sessions in the future.

STRUCTURE

• I am founder, which means nothing except that I'm currently taking primary responsibility for this.
• All admins who are active on chat are co-owners/admins (&). This currently includes: DrMann, Bright, Clef, Drewbear, Photo, Troy, Waxx, and myself.
• All mods who are active on chat are operators (@). This currently includes: Pig_Catapult, Dexanote, Roget, Scantron, Light, and Zyn.
• All other senior staff, all inactive senior staff & mods (who are on chat), and all #site19 chat operators are half-operators (%). This currently includes: Dmatix, Echo, Burns, Eric_H, Jekeled, Soulless, Vezaz, Aelanna, Wogglebug, Kens, Xiao, Tox, Tuomey, Heiden, murphy_slaw, Bouncl, Nusquam, and FlameShirt.
• Sophos has +v as a thank you for helping this get set up (& approaching me with the offer of handing the old room over in the first place). (For those of you who are unfamiliar with IRC, +v doesn't bring with it any power; it just means you can say something if the channel is moderated.)

(Gotta be careful about hitting CTRL+S on everything. This posted too early.)

The Chat Guide summary is as follows:

#site17 - Chatroom just for chatting with, and asking questions of, and bringing up issues to the staff of the SCP Foundation. Does not allow excess general chitchat; otherwise, rules are the same as #site19. Owned by Foundation admins and run by all Foundation staff (including mods, senior staff, & 19 chat ops). Open on an experimental basis.

And finally… we already had a Mibbit thing set up with #site17 on a page called 'chat'. I've added that to the sidebar on the left under "Welcome Page", labeled "Chat With Staff", and added text to the page itself.

Admins have final say on this chat (and the current setup was the result of an agreement between a few admins — although I made a couple minor decisions like adding the previously existing Mibbit page to the sidebar), but anyone on O5 with an opinion can weigh in on the details or on how you think it should be run, so please feel free to do so.

Basically we just want to create more avenues for accessing staff, and this seems like one way of doing so. It won't cover everyone — it's been pointed out to me that IRC itself is a barrier for access — but it's a start, especially given that many of us are more active on IRC than elsewhere. And it's at least another way of having issues brought to our attention!

What am I missing?