Travis Bradshaw

With an event as large and complex as QuakeCon, it’s very often that the full picture of the event doesn’t become clear until after the event is over.  Stories are shared, post-mortem reports come in, and I work to assimilate a wide variety of perspectives of the event into a cohesive understanding of how things went.

One aspect of the event that has emerged as a complete and total failure is the moderation of the IRC server used on site.  The majority of the moderation was embarrassingly poor: in poor taste, with poor decorum, and absolutely not fitting with the amount of respect every BYOC attendee deserves at our event.  I wanted to provide a little bit of context for that mistake, apologize, and share our initial thoughts on how we want to make the IRC experience a positive one at future QuakeCon events.

The root cause of the IRC debacle is one of neglect.  The internal IRC server was viewed as a tertiary service, and when the challenges continued to mount on the IT staff we had little choice but to launch the service and basically abandon it.  To avoid a complete lack of moderation, a haphazard group of operators were assembled from volunteers and attendees.  They were given very little direction and even less oversight, with embarrassing results.

To cut through some of the misinformation, here are some facts:

• The vast majority of the operators on the IRC server at QuakeCon were not staff.
• Virtually all of the information shared relating to sponsors and/or equipment was wildly inaccurate.
• A lot of the “information” about technical difficulties facing the network were little more than hearsay, improperly given weight by the false appearance of being official my misplaced privileges on the IRC server.  (In many cases, a “current hypothesis” overheard near the NOC was passed off as a conclusion.  Of course there was no way to retract the incorrect statement after the hypothesis was proven false.)

Finally, there was no reason for the totalitarian behavior on the part of the channel/server operators.  I speak for all of the network staff when I say that we deeply appreciate your support and your attendance of QuakeCon.  The moderation was always intended to be very laissez-faire and confined to the basic necessities, mainly preventing the organization of illegal activities and trying to keep the main “landing” channel family friendly.  The iron fisted moderation that resulted was embarrassing and disrespectful.  I hope you’ll accept our sincere apologies.

Going into next year, the first course of action is to elevate the importance of the IRC server beyond just a tertiary service.  It’s clear that the QuakeCon community looks to the on-site IRC as both a social outlet and a convenient way to gather information about the event.  For next year, we plan to build a moderation team before the event, so that we can discuss the appropriate behavior for a moderator in our context and the importance of being a “front line” information source for the event.  The fact that so many attendees assumed that the channel operators in the IRC servers were staff and officially represented the event underscores the importance of putting the right foot forward on the internal IRC server so that the BYOC community can be supported with the service, not prosecuted.

I hope that you’ll believe me when I say that the QuakeCon network staff worked tirelessly to support the event and provide the best gaming experience we could for the BYOC.  We know that we fell short, and no one feels that sting more than us.  To find out that—while we were sprinting as hard as we could to make QuakeCon 2010 a success—misplaced operators were discrediting that effort is a painful lesson, indeed.  But you can be certain that we’ll do better next time.

Sincerely,

— Ash