Rule Proposals

Proposed changes and additions to SkipIRC network rules.

Age limit change

Note from Kufat:

After research and checking over my insurance and legal coverage, I've decided to stick with the current age limit progression. If the SCP Wiki changes its age policy, this issue will be revisited.

Privacy / Violation of Confidentiality / Doxxing

Note from Kufat: This proposal was unpopular in its current form due to overreach. I'm going to change it to reduce the scope while keeping the aspects that people were OK with.

Sharing information from private channels and conversations on SkipIRC is a violation of SkipIRC rules.

PM conversations are presumed private by default. A channel is presumed to be private if it generally has any of the following modes set: i, k, p, s. A channel is also presumed to be private if it has ChanServ's RESTRICT feature enabled, or any other similar measure.

This will only apply in cases where substantive information is leaked. (If you reshare a joke someone made in a private channel, for example, there wouldn't be any network-level punishment. The channel's ownership would be free to take whatever action it deems appropriate.) Private conversations may be shared publicly with the consent of all participants and, if from a private channel, the channel's owner.

Sharing conversations with network/channel/off-SkipIRC community staff for purposes of reporting harassment or rulebreaking will not be considered a violation of this rule, nor will sharing conversations with law enforcement should there be a reasonable basis to believe that a crime has been committed.

This rule will only be enforced at the request of other participants in a conversation and/or channel staff in a private channel where the conversation occurred. No enforcement action will be taken without the agreement of no less than 50% of active SkipIRC staff members who are network operators or above.

TODO: Doxxing rule.

Harassment: Attempting to Harm Another User's Mental or Physical Health

Implemented.

VPN rule loosening

Implementation in progress for VPNs. This was considered to be too strict for mobile, so it won't be implemented for mobile ISPs at this time.

As it currently stands, all IP ranges associated with VPNs and similar services are blocked due to a history of use by trolls. This has been effective, but it also inconveniences legitimate users.

Under the new rule, IPs associated with VPNs, similar services, and some mobile/cellular Internet services would be allowed to connect to the network, but only if a valid registered nick is logged into via SASL at connect. This is inspired by a rule on Libera.Chat designed to solve problems similar to the ones that SkipIRC has experienced.

Mobile networks have become an increasingly large source of trolls. As it stands, banning individual mobile users is effectively impossible without also banning thousands of other IPs. Restricting those IP ranges to logged-in users could be a good balance between security and maintaining access for all. (Legitimate new users could wait until they returned home to register an account and then use that account on their mobile devices after that.)