The Chatroom for Senior Members of deviantART.
Senior Members are Deviants who have been selected and designated (with ` or °) by deviantART Staff as having contributed remarkably in support of the site and Community over the course of their membership. [as understood and interpreted by attila]
Some common sense rules for communicating in a chat room on the internet. The following is borrowed heavily from established IRC doctrine (mostly relating to EFnet and similar networks), and found on the internet with some personal experience and modified for #SeniorMembers perogative.
Meet The ‘Operators’
p-51 (Paul), insaneone (Bobby) & Attila (Vince) are your “Ops” in #SeniorMembers. Our role is to help structure the channel in such a way, that it is condusive to effortless, flowing dialogue and is a ’safe’ enviroment for regular members, free of disruption and abuse. Ops are selected by the channel Founder with these things in mind: they are fair, a level headed individual, can abide by and apply the Channel Guidelines fairly, they have exhibited a consistent interest in the channel, and last but not least, are pro-active Senior Members of deviantART.Keep Chatroom Purpose in Mind
The #SeniorMembers chatroom exists for the discussion of deviantART, the art/design/writing communities and deviantART Senior Member related issues. We’re a public chatroom, welcoming people of all ages, cultures and walks of life. That being said, #SeniorMembers isn’t a “general” chat per se, it’s the official channel of Senior Members of deviantART, but has an open policy regarding who can join and participate in discussions. Please, try to not offend anyone and most especially to not be offended if someone doesn’t conform to your own idea of proper.Occasional Social Banter
A low level of silly repartee among ops and chatroom regulars is a normal aspect of the chatroom and considered just part of the show. The second half of our topic is often frivolous. If you’re a stranger, feel free to join in on the fun. However, such merrymaking must take a back seat to helping, so occasional crack-downs are to be expected. Please, do not engage in full-blown off topic conversations with friends or make small talk with enticing new strangers, on the chatroom. Message them privately. Such occasions of excessive ‘flirting’ or rude jokes may result in a warning or kick and banning from the channel.The Teaching of Annoyances
#SeniorMembers is dedicated to a kinder, gentler deviantART. We’re not in the business of teaching folks about ways to defeat deviantART rules, to insult other members, or to confuse visitors looking for help. Most people find that stuff to be rude and annoying and so, we just don’t allow it, or help with it at all, not even to help you find a chatroom that will support it.Politics of Other Chatrooms
#SeniorMembers doesn’t get involved in the politics of other chatrooms on the dAmn network, including ‘banning’ situations. Please don’t join to tell someone who is there to find out for you why you got banned. Don’t recruit help for your “cause” in #SeniorMembers. We’ll point out problem behaviors when we see them, in the interest of spreading good netizenship.Read the FAQ
If your question or problem is clearly addressed in the deviantART FAQ, don’t be surprised to be pointed there (hopefully with some hint of where to look). Please, don’t get testy about being asked to read some specific section of the documntation. Even if we were to retype it for you, you’d still be doing some reading, so get over it. If you have already studied the FAQ and explored deviantART’s #help, then tell specifically what it is about the documentation that has you confused. We understand that it takes most people many readings and lots of practice to grasp what others may seem to understand almost intuitively. Anyone who repeatedly displays trouble reading the documentation may be pointed to a chatroom which prefers to help on a more rudimentary level.When and Where to Ask
You don’t need permission to pose a question, or to announce that you are about to ask something. Just dive right in. Your best bet is to state your actual question or problem as clearly as possible to the chatroom in #SeniorMembers, where the most people are likely to see you, and then those most able and available to help will identify themselves, eventually. If no response, then you make the question easier to answer. Tell what you’re doing, trying to do and the result. If no one opts to help, don’t make a scene… just go or look elsewhere for assistance.Attention Seeking Gimmicks
Ask just one time. If you get no response after several minutes, try again. Then wait for another time of day. Asking more often might be considered a flood, especially during busy times. Don’t use all caps, excessive non-alphanumeric characters, asciiart, bold, underline, or bright colors. Many of us work on other projects & problems while here, and your doing that may disturb their concentration on another matter.Designating Your Answerer
Please, don’t encourage folks to direct their questions to only certain people. Our goal is to make this an environment where users can learn to help themselves and each other. We recommend everyone ask their questions to the chatroom, and anyone who thinks they might know any part of the answer is encouraged to try to help. If you direct your question to a specific person, nobody else will even try to answer it, thinking it’s not for them to butt in. If the one you chose doesn’t know, you’re out of luck.Speak English Even If Broken
Only English is spoken in #SeniorMembers. If your English is not strong, try your best. We will not allow anyone to ridicule your genuine attempt. Excessive use of MiXeDuP tExT, L33t (elite “fonts”), sdrawkcab (backwards) or Ebonics/Medieval generators will be dealt with harshly, tho (at least by some of us).Hold the Useless Reports
Don’t announce to all users normal stuff that we see for ourselves, such as what the date and time are now where you are, joins (“SoAndSo has just joined #SeniorMembers!”), parts (“Good riddance! USERNAME was a pain, anyway.”), userlevel (“Why did so and so get promoted and I didn’t?”), the size of the ban list or the chatroom (“Oh! Lots of people, here!”), who has clones, or other chatroom statistics whether happening here or elsewhere. No chatroom that’s existed more than a few minutes appreciates any of that stuff.Let Disturbing Posts Die
Please, don’t complain about or paste into open chatroom, any material that is coming to you privately. Respond to that person directly, outside the chatroom. If you’re being flooded or otherwise annoyed by something on your own screen, don’t annoy the rest of us with it, too, or give the user even more publicity or notoriety. If the offending party is in the chatroom with you, message an operator of that chatroom (usually in the “Seniors” class) with an excerpt and wait for them to take action.Kicks & Bans
Kicks and bans are important aspects of chatroom maintenance. A kick tells the server to force a user leave the chatroom. However, he may rejoin it if the chatroom modes allow it. A ban keeps the user from joining a chatroom, or from re-joining a chatroom if he’s been kicked out.Automatically Kick-able Offenses
Some behaviors are so universally considered offensive, that we do not wait to see if you will cooperate and stop. We kick first and ask questions later. These offenses include: cloning (being on multiple accounts and in same chatroom), vulgar language (racism, and harmful insults), inappropriate usernames, “asciiart”, excess font formatting, repeating, scrolling or otherwise flooding the chatroom or our users, polling the users for opinions to be expressed on the chatroom about anything (but especially if off topic and most especially if about age/sex/location), asking for everyone to type something in unison, abusive tricks targeted at naive users, inviting to join another chatroom, or begging (asking to be promoted to a usergroup). We reserve the right to change this list at whim to better control the chatroom.Inconsistency of Treatment
We have no creed to which all of the ops must adhere when it comes to what we may allow or disallow (with the exception of what’s listed on this very page). Our ops are chosen for their ability to think independently and act in the interest of the chatroom. Therefore, you may occasionally annoy an op, for doing something that another op doesn’t mind, or even something that you’ve seen another op or other user do. That’s life.When You Yourself Trigger a Ban
The op who bans you or kicks you may not actually be the one you’ve offended, since we operate on a kind of mental telepathy, here. You’ll sometimes be nailed by whomever is closest. We also do not second guess each other, so are unlikely to remove a ban laid down by another op. Most of us will /ignore messages from anyone seeking to be unbanned. Your position as a banee is rather bleak. If the ban is not removed within a minute or so, then try to learn from your mistake (if the offended op was kind enough to include a reason in the kick) and feel welcome again later in the day (probably). Your ban time may vary. When you finally get back in, don’t be annoying by asking questions about the ban. We’ll probably have no idea who you are, even if any of the same ops are active. Most other chatrooms operate about this same way.Who May Overturn Bans?
The only persons in the chatroom, #SeniorMembers, who may overturn a ban, is one of the members of the “Operators” class or the person who instituted the ban initially. Those who disregard this very simple rule, will have their position reconsidered as it expresses lack of unity amongst the Ops and lack of concern for consistent control of the chatroom.
This document is not complete and information may be added to or subtracted from on a whim. Please check back from time to time to see if anything has been updated. Thank you for reading. -Attila (#SeniorMembers)
