#REBELYELL VISION and GUIDELINES

We're just over 6 years old, many thanks to the ops, old and new/current, and regular chatters. The purpose of the room still reigns: “#RebelYell is a room devoted to the freest expression and exchange of different ideas about all the classic human concerns: politics, religion, culture, philosophy, science, art. And the value of this freedom to speak openly is not so much in the individual's liberty to express his ideas and argue for his own ideals but rather in the need for an open society to hear as many competing ideas as possible in order for that society to make the finest decisions about itself and its future.

VISION
The Vision of #RebelYell is this: that people from different backgrounds, with different ideals and competing ideas and arguments can come to speak openly and without fear of punishment or silencing in a public arena. Further, that people with inimical ideals can get beyond the anger at hearing their most cherished values criticized and condemned, speak to the issues and reason together about their differences toward some common goal, at least of mutual understanding if nothing else.

GUIDELINES
There is another part to free speech – that is: free hearing. It's not enough to be able to speak freely in forums of public discussion, it's important that others be allowed also to hear. IRC is fairly immune to violent physical disruption of speech, but there are other ways to disrupt or silence a speaker so that others cannot hear him: abusive adhoms, divertive and disruptive nonsense, constant joking insults that annoy a speaker, bullying and nagging/repetition of questions already answered, flooding the scroll making it difficult for others to keep up/find responses, speaking *for* the other person in egregiously distorted fashion. In effect the speaker is muffled or silenced, actively DIScouraged from continuing his part of the discussion or prevented from focusing on his issues. And the point has been to refuse not his right to speak but the right of others to hear his speech. Others have the right to determine for themselves who they want to listen to, and what they want to listen to. Let them.

I want to actively ENCOURAGE people to discuss freely to their issues. So:
Everything stems from this: avoid discouraging discussion – try to encourage it.  We allow more extreme behavior on IRC, in #RebelYell particularly, but there are always limits. These limits are not a destruction of free speech, but rather the necessary platform that allows speech at all.

1. Restrain personal attacks: attack propositions, evidence, and reasoning – the argument, NOT the person.  Avoid egregious, frivolous, especially MEAN comments about specific chatters.
2. Don't threaten violence, and don't suggest it by pasting personal information at all, ever.
3. Profanity and vulgarity – PLEASE – just keep them down.
4. Channel Policy Discussion/complaints/etc. Not against the rules, but you'll get better hearing in private messages to ops or CM. Also you may send such things to rebelyell@cox.net.
5. Which brings me to treatment of ops – and me, the Channel Manager. WE are restrained by the Vision/Guidelines as much or more than chatters. But that's not a license to abuse us. We'll take MORE potshots than ops in other rooms – this is one of the founding points of #RY: OPS are chatters too, but with terrible power to undo the very purpose of the room. Therefore, we offer much greater freedom in speech and personal style/behavior for the chatters, and greater restraint on the power of ops to punish chatters both for personal dislike or for disagreement on issues. In fact – ops are NEVER to kick or ban chatters merely for personal dislike, and especially not for content – for ideology, for reasons that fail to convince the op or for failure to support a position. The only power ops can apply to disagreement on issues is *reason* - NOT kicking or banning. Just like any other chatter.
6. All the other standard rules of irc chatrooms still apply to some degree: flooding, caps/colors/scripts are a problem only in that they can disrupt or destroy a discussion. Lecturing – I call it “talking to the world” - is not disallowed, if annoying. We WANT fuller comments/longer posts in order to explain complicated ideas/reasoning.

REMEMBER: The very purpose of #RebelYell is to facilitate and encourage expression of ideas and dialogue of difficult and controversial issues. In general, excess is the key. Avoid it.

Please, feel free to message ops/CM with complaints, questions, criticisms. And don't EVER be afraid to cheer and praise!

goshzilla, your beloved Channel Manager "The chatters' op"
rebelyell@cox.net