Operators who have volunteered to lurk: please join #site20 and then ping me in opchat to receive your roles.

Disregard, I missed the chatstaff portion.

Neutralzone was specifically a debate channel and had a lot of banned people.

I think 20 is different enough from those to stand and can work.

I'll also put myself forward to be an operator-on-call for overflow between the hours of 8 am and 2 am EST.

Neutralzone suffered from a number of its most active users being banned or otherwise drifting from the community and an increasingly negative reputation (these facts are not entirely unrelated).

The fundamental difference here is those were intended (and in EC's case, still is) to be consistent, running, active side channels with discussion independent 19. That is not the case here. To wit, it will not whither on the vine because we will allow no vine to take root.

Site20 will be opened to users participating in a discussion that was redirected only for the period that such discussion is had. It will then be muted once the discussion has run its course or the operator decides the discussion otherwise needs to be stopped.

Your comparisons are wholly inapposite because this is not intended to be a side-channel. There will be no #site20 community in the way EC has one, and Neutralzone had one. It is purely utilitarian: used when it is needed, kept in a permanent mute when it is not.

To cut off the follow-up "what's the point, then" question at the pass: political discussions are very frequent in 19, as any active operator will know, and tense discussions that do not yet meet the standards for a stop order occur several times weekly, at least. These place a great degree of strain on active operators and piss off a significant portion of our chat who do not get involved in such discussions.

I’m not opposed, but I see a mission statement without a real explanation of the plan. Having an overflow channel is a good idea, especially as we get deeper into the worst year ever, but this has been tried and failed before and I want to know what’s different this time beyond personnel and personality.

But seriously, I would like to see more discussion over what is consider 19 appropriate and what is considered 20 jurisdiction. In addition, I'd like to propose expanding this to including all hot-button topics - religion comes to mind, as do discussions about guns or wealth distribution or other topics that can get seriously heated, but can also provide value when discussed in a non-inflammatory way.

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

I'm a little leery of this, especially if ops are shorthanded at that time and nobody else is able or willing to have 20 handed off to them. Could create pressure to either not stop order a conversation that needs to be stopped, or to completely stop one which would normally be fine to continue in 20.

Otherwise, no complaints.

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.