Staff abuse:

Since the network was formed back in July of 1998, DynastyNet has always had very strict policies concerning the actions of the staff on the network. By staff we mean anyone who is an official representative of the network. This includes server owners, admins, global opers and local opers, and in some cases HelpCom helpers. We have rules for the users of the network, and even stricter rules with harsher punishments for the opers(IRCops) responsible for taking care of the network. This document will try to help you determine if you have been subject to oper abuse.

What constitutes oper abuse? That was the question OperCom was faced with when they were created by Eboard to be in charge of all activities concerning network staff. Infact things keep being added to the list as new services are added to the network. Below is a shortened, more generalized list of what is considered oper abuse.

• No staff member shall use their position or abilities to set, change, or remove any channel mode that they wouldn't normally have access to with ChanServ.


• No staff member shall intimidate or threaten another person on the network with their abilities. Example, if an oper suggests that you op him or face the consequences, that would be abuse.


• No staff member shall /kill or ban a user from the network for a personal reason. All kills and bans (from the network) must have a valid reason and be supported by logs.


• No staff member shall use services to gain a channel or nick that they or a friend wants.

What this list, and all oper abuse really, boils down to is that no staff member shall do anything to anyone or any channel that they couldn't do as a normal user unless they are performing in the best interest of the network. When an oper is required to act due to people or channels breaking the rules, then some of these rules no longer apply since that is after all the oper's job. Make sure the rules are enforced without over stepping their own boundaries. Just because an oper is acting on official buisness though does not mean they are excempt from abuse reports. They still must show respect and not let personal feelings get involved in the situation.

If you think you have been subjected to oper abuse or oper intimidation, please report it to OperCom. Every report of abuse is taken very seriously and investigated fully. You can report abuse anonymously if you wish, but if OperCom has follow-up questions, it would be impossible for us to pursue it. You can email our abuse hotline anonymously if you wish from this site. Just make sure the email is very detailed and we need some sort of proof that this happened. If it was services abuse we can look that up if you give us the time/date and the time zone this happened in.

All complaints to OperCom's abuse line are kept as confidential as possible. During the course of the investigation and hearing the oper may discover who filed the complaint due to the nature of the complaint. For example, if you where the channel owner and filed a complaint because oper Y made himself a channel op, then during the course of the hearing when we confronted them with why they did that they'd probably be able to guess who it was who filed the complaint. If a staff member where to pursue this and try to intimidate or ban the person who complained about him, that oper would loose their oline if they didn't loose it already because of the violation.

DynastyNet takes all abuse cases seriously and no staff member is exempt from abuse complaints. We have procedures in place to deal with it even if the staff member is a member of OperCom. If you have any further questions about abuse, please contact opercom and we'll answer them for you.

User abuse:

DynastyNet has recently opened an Abuse/Spam reporting channel. This channel has been specially coded to only allow channel operators, those with a '@' by their nick, to see channel messages. If you observe abuse, or are abused by a user, you may join that channel and report it anonymously. The channel ops do not tolerate idlers, so only staff members will be in there. If the abuse was by a staff member, please follow the above steps. If you'd rather not handle this online, please use the 'Contact Us - Abuse' page to send an email.

If there are no staff members opped in #Busted, you may use /IRCOPS to display a list of all Admins and Opers, as well as their Away status. Feel free to message one of them with your concern.