Let me know how you feel about the IRC

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Its about time you guys needed someone to direct your IRC issues and concerns to about how this IRC is being run. This thread should be for you guys to tell me what you feel needs to be changed about his IRC Chat. What can I do to help you guys and be the kind of representative who fights for the people. Ultimately, my goal is to accurately represent all of you and to try to keep you guys happy. Let me know in this thread all the problems you find in the IRC and report them here. I will compile many of these problems into an overall report which will be sent to Alex Plank one way or another. Eventually, he will start listening to us, the users who make the chat and site possible. Without us, there is no wrong planet.

Here are a couple of things I find wrong with the IRC. You guys tell me if you agree:

I was watching a You Tube video about how Alex was speaking about bullying. I feel like I see lots of bullying go on in the main IRC chatroom. The irony is most of the bullying is coming from the ops themselves who abuse their power. In addition to this most of the time the punishments don't fit the crimes. For example if the ops don't like someone then they will take a situation which calls for a minor temp ban and turn it into a perma ban because they are sending a message that "they can". Not only this but I have seen the ops see flame wars go on and they pick and choose sides and ban the person they feel they like the least. When a decision is voted for whether or not a decision should be overturned, the voting process is BS because the ops are going to vote the same and stick together no matter what. There are trolls in the rooms who can say whatever they want and not have any consequences from the situations. Yet if someone is on the ops bad side the very minute they make a minor error in judgement a perma ban happens. This is issue #1.

The second issue is that if you want to contact Alex about any problems he acts like he is way too busy to bother. There is also nobody else out there who can understand a situation and a user and give them the fair treatment they deserve. There is nobody out there who can be a representative for people in wrong planet and fight for them. They are helpless. For users who need help they are stuck trying to advocate for themselves and being silenced. Nobody is understanding of anyone's conditions at all.

The third is the way things flow in the rooms. It is not a community in which everyone is welcome to speak and gain understanding. This is far from an autopian vision. This is more like high school. Everyone runs with a pack and a clique. Nobody cares to be a family. If there is a disagreement someone is steam rolled away and out from the bigger clique that matters more. This is why we are all divided as autistics and why there are "Over 9 thousand" autism chats. Because nobody gets understanding and listened to here. There are users who are in the room and say absolutely nothing and they don't chat at all because they think nobody really cares what they have to say. Their voice is usually ignored and nobody could give a toss.

The forth is when someone is having mental issues, mental breakdowns, etc etc and need support. Most of the time these users are treated coldly in the room. They are either A.) Ignored, B.) Harassed and Embarrassed C.) Silenced or D.) Asked to leave. I feel as though in a body of like minded people we should all at least TRY to understand each other. At least make attempts to be a family rather than make judgements. Who are you to say that someone "Only is trying to get attention." Maybe they NEED that attention. Have you ever been in a situation where you just wanted someone to listen to you? This is also unbalanced as the users who are the most popular, take up the entire room with their issues and garner and suck up pity from their cliques. Most anyone else who doesn't fit in gets worked up into more of a state or leaving more screwed up then when they asked for help. This needs to change.

These are just a couple of issues and points I feel I had to make. Please feel free to share some of yours. Hopefully Alex will actually take this seriously and not just dismiss it. It is fairly obvious the IRC has some major problems. If nobody else is going to be an active force in changing this, I will help you guys out by at least calling attention to what's going on. You guys need to be heard. If need be, I am willing to be a Wrong Planet Community Representative to bring all of your issues to the forefront.

Everyone may not like me at this site but my vision for everyone to be understood and to be a family still stands. As a family and a unit I will back anyone up who really needs it. This isn't all about me any more, this is all about you getting fair and even handed treatment. This is the largest autism resource on the Internet due to the funding of autism speaks. I don't want to see any of you lost in the rivers of BS and Politics that run ramped on Wrongplanet.

The only connection between Wrongplanet website and #wrongplanet is a link to an IRC client pointed to it. Each are a seperate identity, majority of the forum users never go there or vice versa, essentially neither are dependant on each other, forum mods here have no power over the channel than the IRC ops have any power on here. Most complaints or issues about the IRC channel are re-directed by forum mods by telling them to handle it with the IRC ops, I don't expect constantly complaining about it will help a solution to happen. If it's not worked in the past 7 years I've been on there, it won't happen now. The person you need to talk to really doesn't care about the channel and just lets others run it, so I doubt whether you post here or there, that anything will change, what needs to change is the owner either stepping down and handing over the channel to someone that does have the time to care about it or Freenode steps in and gets tired of all the complaints they get regarding the channel and having to often step in more than they should. This issue has been brought up over and over again even by myself and other contacting Alex, all he does is come in, change around ops, dropped some of the best ones for that channel and then leaves not to be seen again till the next "op purge." I wish Alex would do more to be involved with that channel but due to RL, that isn't happening. Welcome to the ranks of those that want to see change but the chances of it happening are pretty much impossible till a change of ownership or it gets closed by Freenode.