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We will often put the IRC chat text on the video screen during broadcasts. This allows for a more dynamic conversation but at the same time allows trolls and young kids to disrupt the chat. In order to compensate for this we have an automated bot that searches and destroys disruptive users. If you follow the rules below you won’t get banned from the chat room:

#1 - No spamming the room with your link. Keep it on topic. We don’t care about your UStream.tv room with 2 people talking about what you had for breakfast. The same applies for Justin.tv, Blog.tv, MySpace or any other personal site you can think of. Keep the conversation and links on-topic.

#2 - No obscenity. We have a censor filter that will attempt to censor out specific words, but to be frank it is pretty easy to get around that. If you do slide around that filter, the bot may decide that you should be kicked or banned. Keep it clean, on-topic and respectful.

#3 - No insulting the ops. The IRC operators have been tasked with a very difficult job. We don’t want to be banning everyone under the sun but at the same time we don’t want people in the room to get everyone pulled off course. The ops have to make a split second decision as to who will stay and who will go without allowing ego to get in the way. Respect them. They may make a mistake once in a while, but their main purpose there is not to kick and ban but to engage new users.

#4 - No insulting other users. We have a wide range of users and as new community members come on board we will start seeing similar questions repeated over and over again. As long as the user is sincere about their attempt at knowledge they should be treated with the utmost respect. There are no dumb questions no matter how many times you have answered it. Please do not start throwing insults at these users, you had to begin somewhere too.

#5 - Have fun. While you should stay on topic, that doesn’t mean that the topic must always be space travel. The chat room is open 24×7 so feel free to keep it light and fun. We’re here to build a community of space enthusiasts, not a prison.

Mistakes in bans can be made. If you got banned from the IRC and you feel it was unjust simply e-mail benjamin@spacevidcast.com. Provide me with your IRC username and the time you were in the room and got banned. We log every single chat so I’ll go back, review the log and look at each case one-by-one. We take space travel very seriously, but we also want you to participate if you’re going to be a useful member of the community.

Follow these 5 simple rules and your life here along with everyone else will be great!