Guidelines to Running or Operating on an IRC Channel

Okay, ranting blog here after a long time. Recently, having gotten back into IRC, I've noticed that, while in different places, channel ops in many channels that are for generic Chat and light non-serious RP, do not actually act professionally or take what they do seriously. Yes, you are in a channel that is not 100+ people, it's not a corporate chat room, but as an operator you have a responsibility to your users if you want to maintain respectability and control of your chat. So, here are basic basic guidelines for you to follow.

For channel owners.

• Know how to use your network services, and/or have an operator on staff who can help you. This part is super important, because knowing how to use the tools provided to you as a channel owner helps you get this done fast, efficiently, and helps you remember how to take care of problems in the future in case a services database is corrupted or lost. You should know off the top of your head how to add/remove ops, lock your topic, and use chanserv to set channel mode locks.
• Maintain a consistent set of rules posed on your website/forums and as an auto message on chanserv. This does not mean that your rules may not change from time to time, but please do not makes rules that have written into them"At operator's discretion" or other such non-descriptive language. Also, stick to your rules instead of deciding "well, just because they didn't know I'm going to warn them" because if your rules are to be respected, rules are rules and ignorance is no excuse to break one.
• Keep your ops between 15% and 20% of your channels average population. While there is no "magic number" of operators, it helps to have a fairly sizable number of operators and half operators (as well as with larger channels a co-founder with founder access) and have them able to keep watch on the chat at every time of day. Automatic bot floods and stupid people do not sleep, and your channel should not go unmonitored for longer than 5 minutes at a time.
  
• Do not treat some users as special. Your girlfriend/boyfriend/best friend [for life] is not special, not immune to rules, and not able to say "well, this person was being a meanie" and get them removed from the channel.
• Communicate with your operators, and respect their opinions. You made your op staff for a reason, if you want to continue to make them feel like they are important[ish] or like they are not wasting their time in your channel, listen to them and act on their feedback even if it's a simple "let me look into it" that turns up nothing needs to be done (which you should also respond to them about at your conclusion). Do not ridicule your ops for enforcing your own rules, or taking advantage of any flexibility you give them within the rules, especially when you say "Annoying an operator is grounds for removal.

For Operators (and Owners as well)

• Don't be a dick: keep users as much as you can. This one should be pretty self explanatory, and SHOULD go without saying. Occasionally ops will go crazy will power when a user gets on their nerves. We all have done this, and we all know it's inappropriate in a majority of these cases. If you think a user is a troll, query them and see if you can stabilize them there, or if you can get a civil conversation from them. If they do not understand what you are trying to do, do not taunt them, do not set a "quiet" ban or a ban without a kick: just kick+ban them after politely asking them to stop.
• Learn how to set timed bans, or set a timer by your computer for a ban. Not all infractions need a permanent ban, or a "5 second" band just to defeat most auto-join scripts or to teach a lesson. Often, all you need is an hour long ban or sometimes a week long ban, or just 24 hours. Most clients have a way to time a ban, use it if possible.
• Know channel modes, ban types, and how to use helpop. Channel modes are pretty universal, as per the protocol standard. You should learn what channel modes mean, why they're used, and when to change the mode. Having this knowledge helps you presumptively manage the channel against basic spam attacks, or against trolls and/or bots. Most popular IRCd programs have their own version of Unreal's extended ban types, which let you set bans based on real name, as well as bans which let the user join but require a voice to talk, and all of them have the ability to set an exception list for when you need to set a blanket ban but an existing user is covered under that.
• Know which of your members are reliable, but take everything they say with a grain of salt. An important part of being an operator is knowing the channel and is dynamics: know your users know who is a social climber. Just because you can trust somebody though, do not take their word at face value and make sure it matches up with your logs and with what other users say in the case of a dispute, but remember: you are an operator, they are not. And do not decide to have favorites and always take their word, it's bad.
• Keep your clone limit to two, after that de-op your clones. This mostly applies to RP channels, but is still annoying in other places. When you op or half op list suddenly doubles, it's very unnerving to both the users and can be to the channel owner. After all, why do you need 3 connections to the IRC network, much less three connections with operator powers?
• Know how to use /whois, and how to read what it tells you. This information lets you keep track of users, especially slippy users who proxy change their nick and almost everything about them, since they often have the same channel list or leave either a username or real name set the same out of absent mindedness
• The best phrase you know, "Please take it to PM." This should solve a large problem of people fighting in channel, dragging in topics that are undesirable, and just general useless bickering.
• Log everything. Keep track of everything said, every user join and part, every kick, and every ban. You can get various plugins for your client to help you keep track of just kicks and bans, but having logs will help settle ban disputes and disputes between your own actions and a channel owner.
• Know who your IRCops are, but don't contact them to be friends. This one doesn't need really any explanation, other than keep track of your network policies, and be sure to know where to go for help if a user is violating these or if you wish for clarification, or for details about a services bot, or a non-services bot.

This is not a complete list of IRC guidelines, but it is somewhat comprehensive even if it is specifically targeted at one type of channel. I didn't put into details things that i talk about to save time, and since they can be looked up with very minimal effort just by using Google. Hopefully i have given clear explanations of why each guideline is important, and hope you can agree with it after I've spend over seven years on IRC acting as an IRCop, channel op, and just a user.