from Jéské Couriano at Wikipedia talk:IRC
- IRC users, on their own initiative, may keep private logs of conversations, which can be helpful when dealing with users who need help spanning multiple days. What aren't allowed are public logs - i.e. a publicly-viewable log. This is in part for those users' own protection; most IRC clients' logs expose the IPs of users who don't have a hostmask in /join messages, and newcomers have been known to leave personal contact information in public channels such as -en-help.
- All users should not "have equal say". Some channels have very specific requirements to be voiced in them (-en-revdel only allows admins to be voiced, and -en-help has specific requirements for a +v flag, for instance). It is ludicrous to say that someone who has no idea how Wikipedia works has any right to help users who likewise have no idea how Wikipedia works, or that a non-administrator has any right to be an inquisitor for -en-unblock.
- Channel operators can, and SHOULD, be able to take unilateral action against trolls in the channels, and indeed they frequently do. What they don't do is take unilateral action against someone who has a legitimate question or gripe, or remove someone who isn't doing anything wrong (like evading a channel ban or harassing people via PM). Most of the time if an op isn't called for blatant trolling they're called in because a helpee is getting belligerent and/or rejecting any answers given them.
- If an issue is controversial enough that it needs to be discussed on-Wiki, any helper worth their salt can and will point them to the talk page of the article in controversy.
- "Remind user must also compromise" is useless. This is solely aimed at -en-help, and almost every user who doesn't compromise is either high conflict-of-interest or is more interested in venting their frustrations at someone, not legitimate help. Not to mention that at -en-revdel, wikimedia-tech, and -en-unblock, a user is in absolutely no position to be able to compromise by design.
- "Avoid[ing] powertripping" is redundant. Powertripping channel operators get their flags revoked.
- If the situation is such that it's patently obvious the user needs blocked on-wiki and someone is raising the alarm on IRC an admin can and should block on Wikipedia based on an IRC reply. That's part of why the !admin stalkword exists.
- While it looks good on paper, in practice most of the people we talk with in -en-help (again, this particular bullet is a gripe with -en-help) are so ignorant of how Wikipedia works that (a) they don't know talk pages exist and (b) assume we're employees, not volunteers. This is as much a cultural thing than anything - most of our helpees come from the Subcontinent, and no amount of education we can provide in the course of 30m-3h can change this that rapidly.
- There is no need to document changes made to an article via IRC. One shouldn't even be making controversial changes based off of an IRC chat anyways, and on the instances where I have edited on behalf of a helpee I have made it clear I'm doing it on behalf of that user, usually explaining why as I do so.
- Usually when I explain why I am tagging a helpee's article for speedy deletion they point out other articles and claim we're being hypocrites or biased. Most of the time, I helpfully tag these other articles as well as explain that Wikipedia is chronically short on admins.
- The last bullet is redundant. This is a gripe with -en-help specifically, and we already do this (since a fair chunk of people who come in are demanding to know why their page was deleted).