IRC guidelines

Revision as of 19:36, 2 September 2010

In the MeeGo project, we use IRC for a variety of real-time conversations:

• Meetings
• Discussion
• Troubleshooting
• Collaboration
• Chatting with other contributors

General Guidelines

• Pick the right channel: if you aren't sure, you should start in our main #meego channel.
• Keep it clean: many of us participate from work, so keep the language clean.
• Don't be a jerk: treat people with respect and consideration.
• Be helpful: be patient with new people and be willing to jump in to answer questions.
• Stay calm: the written word is always subject to interpretation, so give people the benefit of the doubt and try not to let emotions get out of control.
• More information: this IRC primer for new users and the general IRC guidelines from freenode are also useful resources.

IRC Meeting Guidelines

• Meetings should occur in #meego-meeting
• Keep minutes / logs of your meeting by using the MeeGo Meetbot.
• Always add meetings to the MeeGo-Meeting IRC Schedule to schedule #meego-meeting and make sure that people can find your meeting.
• Announce the meeting on the most relevant mailing list or forum at least 24 hours in advance.
• Announce upcoming meetings on #meego and other required channels prior to starting.
• Follow-up the announcements after the meeting has occurred to post minutes and allow collection of later thoughts and feedback.
• Use a wiki page to organize your agendas and post links to past minutes (example).
• For meeting coordinators, plan your topics carefully into short sentences and give plenty of time for responses.
• If you are not used to IRC, familiarise yourself first, the channels can become overwhelming for new users.
• Smile and have fun! :)