Greetings, wondrous admins.
Owing to the incessantly large channel ban list in aus.gather (which, once full, prevents new bans from being added), we've decided to enable Q's BANTIMER feature, which automatically removes bans from the channel after a specified period (we have it set at 24 hours). Because of this, all of the bans that you set using the traditional "/mode #aus.gather +b *!*@e127-0-0-1.offensive.user.com" will be removed by Q after a one day period.
Since a 24 hour ban is naturally not long enough for some of our more malicious channel abusers, we have also given most (hopefully soon to be all) of the channel operators the master flag (+m) on the CHANLEV. With +m, you will have access to Q's TEMPBAN feature, which allows you to set bans that can exceed a single day.
The format for TEMPBAN is as follows:
- Usage: TEMPBAN <channel> <hostmask> <duration> [<reason>]
- Temporarily bans the provided hostmask on the channel. If the ban is removed from the channel e.g. by a channel op or the BANTIMER feature, the ban will be reapplied if a matching user joins the channel. When the time expires the ban will be removed automatically. Bans set with the TEMPBAN command can be removed before they expire with BANCLEAR or BANDEL. Any users
- matching the hostmask will be kicked from the channel.
- Where:
- channel - channel to set a ban on
- hostmask - hostmask (nick!user@host) to ban.
- duration - length of time to apply the ban for. Suffixes m (minutes), h (hours), d (days), w (weeks), M (months) and y (years) can be used to specify the duration, for example 3d, 5h, 1h30m, 1M.
- reason - reason for the ban. This will be used in kick messages when kicking users matching the ban. If this is not provided the generic message "Banned." will be used.
- TEMPBAN requires master (+m) access on the named channel.
For example, if I wanted to ban user "faghat" for leaving a gather early, I would type the following:
/msg Q tempban #aus.gather *!*@e127-0-0-1.offensive.user.com 5d Do not leave gathers early unless it's an emergency! Five day ban.
Doing so will ban faghat from the channel automatically (if he's still on it), and Q will reapply the ban if faghat joins a couple of days later before his ban is set to expire. Once five days pass, Q removes the ban from both its internal ban list as well as the channel. We encourage you to be fair in your bans and set durations that are appropriate for the offense committed (taking into account any previous bans/warnings that person received).
That all being said, it remains possible to ban users permanently. To do so, use the following command:
- Usage: BAN <channel> <hostmask> [<reason>]
We strongly discourage setting permanent bans except for the most serious violations of gather rules (e.g. hacking), and you should discuss these bans with other admins in an attempt to reach consensus on the matter.
Should you wish to remove a ban early, you will have to use Q's BANDEL command:
- Usage: BANDEL <channel> <ban>
- Removes the specified persistent or channel ban, where:
- channel - the channel to use
- ban - either a ban mask (nick!user@host), or #number (see BANLIST)
- Removing channel bans requires operator (+o) access on the named channel.
- Removing persistent bans requires master (+m) access on the named channel.
To view a list of current bans, type /msg Q BANLIST #aus.gather
If you have any sort of questions regarding these features, feel free to ask xurich or any of the other admins for assistance.