Getting voice in #freenode-social

If you've been on the network for a little while you'll probably have noticed that #freenode presently forwards you to #freenode-social, a moderated channel. This is officially our "staff social channel", but it oftens confuses people how it can seem to take a long time to get a voice, when most of the channel are happily chattering away. I thought I'd have a go at clearing up this mysterious situation a little, in the hope that the channel will cause less angst in the future. At the moment, we get a lot of requests for voice, and I hope that by explaining the situation here it will be easier for people to understand what policies we are implementing.

The channel has been moderated for a long time, and this is because of the many problems with spambots that the network had been experiencing all that time ago. Unfortunately, we are the target of many an attack and moderation stops this - when a staffer comes and gives out voices, they are able to keep an eye on people trying to spoil the fun of others. Although you may notice that some users have auto-voice by ChanServ, a run of voices is usually given out every few hours or so, when a staffer notices that the channel has a lot of unvoiced people. This system isn't the most efficient, but it allows us to keep a close eye on what is going on to keep things stable. Generally speaking, voice is not given on request because we feel that we would find ourselves very quickly inundated with requests, but we try and voice regularly none the less.

I hope that this explanation clears up some concerns surrounding the channel. In addition to all this, we're currently looking for ways to clarify the purpose of the channel, so stay tuned for more.