Rules

To make our network usable for as many people as possible, we have two general rules that limit the use of our network: do not do anything illegal and do not hurt the network. As long as you follow the spirit of those two rules, you are fine from a network perspective.

In addition to the general rules above, the following specific actions are not allowed on the network:

Ban evasion, or attempting to bypass a ban set by a channel, a server, or the network
Engaging in illegal activities
Falsely claiming to be network staff in order to trick users
Flooding and denial of service attacks
Ignore evasion, or intentionally evading an ignore mask set upon you by another user
Indiscriminately sending disruptive messages to multiple channels or users (spamming)
Harassment, which is repetitive, offensive behaviour towards one or more users
Releasing personally identifiable information of others without permission
Allowing your bots or scripts to break one of the rules above.

Channel owners and their channel operator staffs are responsible for enforcing the rules above in the channels they own, and the stability team is responsible for ensuring that these rules are enforced outside channels when the issue is outside the reach of the channel operators.

Bot policy

Anyone may run bots and scripts for anyone reason, as long as the bots and scripts do not adversely affect the network. Anyone who runs a bot or script is held accountable for what that script does and should not run any unknown script without first making sure that it does what it is supposed to do.

Children policy

Because of the needs that children have, we have a few special rules when dealing with children under the age of 13.

Children may only join channels approved for children by the network. These channels currently include #help and #spyrochat.
The owners of channels for children have a responsibility to keep these channels safe for children. They must disallow activity inappropriate for children.
Personal information of children must not be revealed by anyone, including the child.

For more information on child safety on the internet: http://www.fbi.gov/publications/pguide/pguidee.htm