So, recently I've been talking with a couple of the other ops about the fact that there aren't any codified guidelines regarding op behavior. I thought we ought to at least have some level of guidelines for what's expected of us. This is just a rundown of things we mostly already do, but formalized so we can actually point out regulations and be able to provide better context for the expected behavior of channel operators.
1. Don't deliberately instigate excessively disruptive discussion. Disruptive discussion is usually stuff with inflammatory content or the potential to overwhelm any other type of discussion. If a discussion gets out of hand, to put a stop to it, regardless of what it is. Dogpiling, overwhelming the chat, devolving into petty arguments and accusations instead of actual discussion are all things operators should be above, and shouldn't be participating in.
2. Obligation to moderate the channel. If there are fewer than five or six people talking about one specific topic, but they talk for literally hours about it and exclude all other topics of conversation people might want to have, that is a time for an operator to step in. The op either is contributing to the alienation of rest of the chat or is doing nothing to stop it. Similarly, if any of the chat rules are being violated and no op steps in, or worse, propagates it, they have failed in their responsibility.
3. Don't kick just because for the fun of it. There is no justification to kick someone 'as a joke'; either you are issuing a warning, or you're just fucking around. They are a useful tool for enforcing the rules of the room and should not be abused for anything else.
4. Site19 is supposed to be for general SCP chat. If someone comes in and wants to get a draft reviewed, or talk about a new article, an op should do what they can to encourage this discussion. Off-topic discussion that interferes with real discussion can be shunted off into rooms like #scpguntalk, #scp-ponies, #SCPEffect, #xiaobits and #scpminecraft.
5. Treat all community members in the chat equally, even if there are users you don't particularly care for. Don't get into petty character attacks on someone just because they have an opinion different from your opinion. In addition, don't talk shit about users when they aren't in the channel to defend themselves, or cannot be in the channel due to a ban.
6. Do not abuse the op power for personal reasons. Yes, I don't expect anyone who is currently an op to actually do this, but it should be written in stone so in the event that one of our ops gets hit by lightning and goes crazy, or a new op has a sinister hidden agenda, we can bring the hammer down on them.
7. In chatban threads, generally the only posters should be chatops unless someone is important enough that it merits discussion from other staff members. Chatops aren't expected to post in the threads of wiki users, so the senior staff don't really have a place to post in the chat threads. Most staffers aren't ops or come in 19, so having them cross over doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
8. Acting as an obstruction for other ops trying to do their job is kind of not good. When you're on business stay on business, when you're dicking around stay that way. When an op sets a channel to +m, don't use your op to continue goofing. Don't mess around with serious bans. Stuff like that, and openly disagreeing with an op when they're laying down the law, should be kept in staffchat so as not to undermine an op's authority
9. When making administrative decisions or performing administrative actions within the chat, the operator's actions and intentions should be unambiguous. For example, if an op wants to call for a stop to a particular conversation, the op should announce that his decision is an official stop order. By doing so, there is less risk of misinterpretation by users, other ops, and outside observers.
The consequence for repeatedly going against these guidelines would be removing the person from the operator position.
Any thoughts or suggestions are welcome here, I've shown it to some of the other operators but I'd like to get everyone's take as to if these rules are satisfactory and if we want to change anything.
Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!