Monthly General Meeting, February 2022
Propositions and motions
Policies: Section about sharing private info
An amendment to our policies was approved which forbids the collection and sharing of confidential information about other people. It was noted during the meeting that this policy change is not intended to forbid users maintaining their own private logs in their IRC clients.
Patch for policy change
policies.md | 10 ++++++++++
1 file changed, 10 insertions(+)
diff --git a/policies.md b/policies.md
index edafe2a..9fd5ceb 100644
--- a/policies.md
+++ b/policies.md
@@ -60,6 +60,16 @@ Inciting violence is not allowed. The same goes for any other behaviour meant
to deliberately harass, alarm, or distress a person. We also do
not tolerate libel and defamation.
+Collecting or sharing the private or confidential information of other people
+is not allowed. This includes but is not limited to information such as phone
+numbers, post addresses, email addresses, employment information, usernames or
+sign-in credentials. This does not apply to widely available public
+information such as the office phone number of a public official. Libera.Chat
+users and staff members have the ability to remain pseudonymous. Linking a
+Libera.Chat username of someone operating under a pseudonym to other
+identities against their will is not considered acceptable either on or off
+IRC. Libera.Chat staff will not answer questions about such information.
+
While we believe in the concept of freedom of thought and freedom of
expression, Libera.Chat does not operate on the basis of absolute freedom of
speech, and we impose limitations based on the above rules.
Other questions
Internal oversight
The meeting discussed internal oversight measures for highly-privileged staff accounts and how to handle access management and communication when a staffer temporarily steps down. Better documentation around this process was desired, which will be created in other forums.
NickServ registration via the web
The meeting discussed allowing registration of NickServ accounts via a website to reduce friction for users unfamiliar with IRC. There was general agreement that this was desirable, and the meeting left working out details to achieve this feature for other forums.
During this discussion, it was noted that many channels unnecessarily ban or quiet unregistered users. A blog post will be written to discourage channel ops from leaving such bans or quiets enabled long-term and to discuss other ways to moderate channels and curb abuse coming from unregistered connections.
Bypassing IP blocklists while using SASL
It was noted that VPNs or extremely dynamic home IPs are often listed in an IP blocklist used by Libera.Chat, and these listings can impact the ability for legitimate users to connect to the network. The meeting discussed making the blocklist not apply to users connecting while using SASL to authenticate against their NickServ account. An alternative was raised to make the ability to bypass these blocklists account-based instead of IP-based. No decision was made during the meeting, and it will be discussed further in another forum.
Adjustments to an internal channel
The meeting discussed the usage of an internal channel and potential adjustments to how the channel is used to make it more useful for staff. Some suggestions were raised, and the meeting elected to discuss these adjustments further in another forum.
Accepting donations
The meeting discussed three potential methods to accept donations: Open Collective, Liberapay, and GitHub Sponsors. Some of these methods require an account with either Stripe or PayPal in order to receive the funds. The meeting decided to proceed with setting up Liberapay with a backing Stripe account. Other methods of accepting donations will not be set up at this time, but the meeting expressed an interest in setting up alternative methods should there be an actual need for them.
Difficulties with the Matrix bridge
The meeting briefly discussed recent issues surrounding the Matrix bridge in preparation for an upcoming meeting with Element Matrix Services, the operators of the bridge.
Staff recruitment efforts
An update was given regarding an effort to identify potential new members for staff.