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Date:         Mon, 25 Jan 1993 15:13:09 -0500
From:         Jay Vassos-Libove <libove@ALF.DEC.COM>
Subject:      Re: Relay Ops and IRC Equivalent
              Ops and IRC Equivalent" (Jan 25, 11:08am)

Rich Jacobs <RJACOBS%CCVM.SUNYSB.EDU@ncsuvm.cc.ncsu.edu> says:

|     This is one of the major reasons why I avoid IRC most of the time.  There
|are *to many* people with higher privalages on IRC and I see this "channel op"
|privelage as being abused to a very high degree.  I have been on channels where
|people are booted off for no reason at all.  It is not uncommon to see 5 and 6
|people booted off a channel.  When you have so many people that have that type
|of power, there is a great chance of it being abused.  And I have seen it in
|action.

I have been a user of Relay since fall 1986, and a user of IRC since
its inception (some time in 1987).

The greatest reason that there is a difference in structure between
IRC and Relay is that Relay is a tolerated and regulared service,
provided on a network with real limitations, and very real oversight
(meaning people whose jobs depend, at least in part, on making
sure that the network runs well).  IRC, on the other hand, is
tolerated as often by ignorance of the folks who administer a
local chunk of internet, as by acceptance of those people. IRC
can not be regulated the way Relay can, because it is essentially
impossible to stop a person from using IRC.

Way back at the beginning of IRC, in the 1987-1988 time frame,
the perhaps 50 active users of the IRC from all over the world
had a discussion about whether to make IRC run as a privileged
service, which means that it would have to be run with the
consent and action of the real administrators of systems, rather
than by anyone who has a UNIX account and wants an IRC server
and/or client.  The decision was made to make it an anarchy
of anyone who wanted to run a piece of the IRC server network,
with minimal (and fairly ineffective) censure of users whose
servers caused trouble for any reason, from the other server
operators in the region.

Channel operators are fairly necessary in the IRC world, whereas
they're not particularly necessary (Though they still would be
a nice feature) in the Relay world.

Regarding abuses - people are more likely to be abusive on IRC
because it is so difficult to catch and/or penalize them, and
because there is no official method for penalizing them. It
isn't really possible to &LOCK a user out of IRC, whereas
it is trivial for any Relay operator of sufficient level to
prevent a user account from signing on again, for whatever
period the operator deems appropriate.

I see abuses on Relay also, but unfortunately I have seen a
small number of abuses by operators, and some times people who
have been harassed or threatened over Relay choose not to go
to an operator because they either don't understand that there
is a formal method for punishing abusive users on Relay, or
because they've had, or have heard of, a problem with a Relay
operator in the past.

Enough of this diatribe.
-Jay "Pain-Dream" Vassos-Libove
LIBOVE at DRYCAS     or     libove@dec.com
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU