Opers / Training

Operators and Training Policies

I. Behaviour

1. Operators will behave professionally

• As an officially appointed member of the Abjects Staff, opers are held to a much higher standard of behaviour than regular users.

• Opers may not abuse their powers. This includes unnecessary or excessive usage of services or oline access.

• Opers will realize that their position makes them targets of varying degrees of abuse, ridicule, and comments and will ignore such things or respond to them amicably. Comments about or directed at an Oper do not justify use of Oper powers as a response.

• No oper is allowed to "represent", speak for, or otherwise present themselves as ambassador of Abjects on other networks.

2. Operators will respect user channel's privacy and independence

• Opers will NOT banwalk, keywalk, or join channels set +s unless specifically invited by the channel ops.

• Oper may not op, deop, themselves or manipulate a channel in any way except for the rare specifically stated exceptional cases such as assistance on request by the channel founder or SOP's and then only modes +mi are needed, not opping yourself.

• Channel floods should be left to be dealt with by that channel's ops unless assistance is requested. #OperHelp is deisgned to help opers who don't know how to deal in such circumstances

• Opers may ONLY offer guidance to channel owners and Ops on how to respond to such attacks and how to defend against them in the future. SA's will gather IP's and add akills if needed. That is all. SRA's/NA's are the only ones authorized to deal with malicious botnet channels.

• Opers with Operserv may join a channel being flooded to monitor the situation but should NOT adjust channel modes or Op themselves.

• Opers may not request, advise, or demand that Ops of a channel Op them at ANYTIME, including during a channel flood or other "attack".

3. Staff interaction

• Opers should be courteous, respectful, and polite to fellow operators, administrators, and network staff.

• Opers should never be abusive or disrespectful.

• Opers are expected to behave professionally in all network channels.

II. Responsibilities

1. Network maintenance and management

• Opers are expected to familiarize themselves with the proper routing of servers in order to help the network recover from splits

• Opers should be active in monitoring their server's Notices in an attempt to spot potential problems, concerns, or information that they can use to perform a variety of actions for the benefit of the network or to provide to the security team, routing, or their admins when requested or needed.

• Opers who have the necessary services access for adding klines should kill reported or spotted spam bots, flood bots, or other connections that meet the requirements, making sure to follow the necessary policy and procedures.

2. User help and support

• Opers are expected to help users and respond to requests for help politely

• If an oper receives a request for help and is too busy or otherwise unable to give assistance, the oper should direct the user to another active oper or a help channel.

• If an oper does not have the necessary services access, knowledge, information, or is unable to sufficiently help a user for any reason, the oper should explain this to the user and then offer to refer the user to a staff member who can help them.

• Opers should not accept user requests to kill ghosts or kill their own ghosts when services can be used instead.

• Opers will not become involved with internal channel related politics. Any channel disputes and incidents should be resolved between the channels with minimal participation of any network staff except in an extremely limited mediatory role.

III. Discipline

1. Who and where to report abuse

• Each Oper is the responsibility of the Admin of the server hosting their primary Oline.

• General abuse or hassles with operators or servers should be presented to the server's administrator.

• An attempt should be made to resolve the problem by talking to the Oper or Admin directly.

• If the problem remains unresolved after the Admin has investigated and made a decision, a report can be sent to the EB.

IV. Procedure

1. Bot or Otherwise Forbidden Channels

• Opers finding a channel with illegal bots, such as compromised hosts, clones, or drones, must part immediately and notify an SRA or SA.

• Under NO circumstances should an Oper even idle in the channel much less op himself or adjust any modes in the channel.

• Do not contact the channel owner or anyone op'd in the channel, this will be down to the SRA or SA.

• Do not kill or akill anyone or anything in the channel.

• Do not inform ANYONE else, even staff members, other than SRA's or SA's. (Dealing with mass bots is a delicate and complicated situation. Only SRA's and SA members have the authority to address these situations.)

• If the channel was reported by a user, inform the user that network security has been notified and advise him/her to part the channel to avoid being mistakenly connected to the channel by the security team.

2. When in doubt ASK

• Opers should keep in mind that any action taken by them could profoundly affect their future with the network. They should realize that there exist a number of actions where they will not get second chances.

• If an oper is unsure of the policy or procedure regarding a situation or an action on their part, that oper should ask the staff members who are most likely to know or inquire publicly in #operators.

• Accordingly, when opers are instructed by their admins, higher ranking staff, or a member of EB to do something or asked to stop doing something, failure to comply may lead to disciplinary action or termination.

3. Akills / Klines

• Opers will ONLY akill in cases of spamming (defined in AUP), attempting to infect, flooding, or other extreme incidents where the network's integrity or functionality is threatened or effected.

• Keep in mind that there are almost no instances where an akill of an individual (non-bot) user is considered to be appropriate or necessary. Opers will /ignore a user who is being insulting or abusive privately or +b them from a public network channel such as #abjects if they are misbehaving in there. Users performing any other unacceptable activities, such as spamming or mass inviting should be politely asked to stop. If they fail to do so, they should be warned at least once and in extreme cases receive at least one kill as a warning. Only in the rare cases when after all of these warning the user still does not stop, then a short term akill is justified. (Again, if in doubt regarding when akill is appropriate, ASK.)

• Opers must make sure that they Akill using the proper procedure as specified in the kline division's policies, especially ensuring that they provide an adequately descriptive reason.

4. Services (if level of access permits)

• Opers will refer any users claiming to have had their nicks or channels stolen from them to an SRA or SA.

• During times when services are down, since nick verification is impossible, opers will NOT accept requests to op anyone in any channel even if the person making the request is using the known and recognized nick of that channel's founder. On the rare occasions when services are down for an extended period of time, opers may upon request set a channel that is being flooded, attacked or otherwise abused to moderated and/or invite only.

** Note: IRC Operators are not subject to or automatically given services access ***