freenode volunteers and sponsors are advised that an understanding and appreciation of the catalyst’s role is essential to understanding the nature and intended purpose of the network..
### An effective catalyst is:
-1. **Relaxed.** To keep things calm, you yourself must be calm. Learn the skills of staying genuinely relaxed. Know your limitations; when you can't handle a problem situation calmly, get calmer heads involved.
-2. **Open-minded.** It's easy to make assumptions about other people's motivations. When you decide someone is behaving maliciously, you've made an assumption about their motivation which may be difficult to disprove. Try to make your assumptions about other people's motivations as positive as possible.
-3. **Responsible.** Peer-directed projects are a group activity with a strong need for responsible individual behaviour. Rumours, innuendo and gossip can derail projects and ruin reputations. If everybody knows something is true, who is "everybody?" Did the person you're talking to get their information from documented, factual sources, or is it hearsay? If you can't be sure of the answer to those questions, should you be passing on what they've said?
-4. **Unobtrusive.** It's not necessary to invoke authority to help solve a problem, and far better if you don't. Look for an opportunity to nudge the situation into a more productive track. Don't criticise the user if a quiet change of subject, or a private conversation on a completely different topic, can help make the problem fade away.
-5. **Realistic.** Accept the personalities of your users and concentrate on problem resolution. Don't expect people to suddenly change their personalities to make problem resolution easier.
-6. **Careful.** Everything you say will be interpreted by the users with whom you interact. Consider how your remarks will be interpreted before you make them. Make sure the message you convey is the one you intend.
-7. **Attentive.** Understand the situation you have walked into before you act. Question your assumptions. Look for signs that you may have misinterpreted the situation, in order to avoid causing difficulties for a user who did not create the problem.
-8. **Minimalist.** Don't do more than you need to in order to resolve a problem. A problem scene is often the wrong time and place to set policy. Concentrate on the resolution, and on collecting information you can think about later.
-9. **Courteous.** Even under time pressure, courtesy costs little and impresses people a lot. It's not about whether working with the person is easy or difficult; it's about setting the right tone.
-10. **Cooperative.** Look for opportunities to get people involved in the resolution of their own and others' problems.
-11. **Someone with an internal locus of control.** Catalysts concentrate on solving problems, not bestowing blame. Treat the situation as the problem, accept the users for who they are and try to figure out how best to help resolve the difficulty.
-12. **A user.** Remember that you're not in charge. Everybody runs their own little corner of the world. Let them do the job they're capable of. Just help the process along as unobtrusively as possible. Other catalysts are users as well, and nobody is perfect.
-
+1. **Relaxed.** To keep things calm, you yourself must be calm. Learn the skills of staying genuinely relaxed. Know your limitations; when you can't handle a problem situation calmly, get calmer heads involved.
+2. **Open-minded.** It's easy to make assumptions about other people's motivations. When you decide someone is behaving maliciously, you've made an assumption about their motivation which may be difficult to disprove. Try to make your assumptions about other people's motivations as positive as possible.
+3. **Responsible.** Peer-directed projects are a group activity with a strong need for responsible individual behaviour. Rumours, innuendo and gossip can derail projects and ruin reputations. If everybody knows something is true, who is "everybody?" Did the person you're talking to get their information from documented, factual sources, or is it hearsay? If you can't be sure of the answer to those questions, should you be passing on what they've said?
+4. **Unobtrusive.** It's not necessary to invoke authority to help solve a problem, and far better if you don't. Look for an opportunity to nudge the situation into a more productive track. Don't criticise the user if a quiet change of subject, or a private conversation on a completely different topic, can help make the problem fade away.
+5. **Realistic.** Accept the personalities of your users and concentrate on problem resolution. Don't expect people to suddenly change their personalities to make problem resolution easier.
+6. **Careful.** Everything you say will be interpreted by the users with whom you interact. Consider how your remarks will be interpreted before you make them. Make sure the message you convey is the one you intend.
+7. **Attentive.** Understand the situation you have walked into before you act. Question your assumptions. Look for signs that you may have misinterpreted the situation, in order to avoid causing difficulties for a user who did not create the problem.
+8. **Minimalist.** Don't do more than you need to in order to resolve a problem. A problem scene is often the wrong time and place to set policy. Concentrate on the resolution, and on collecting information you can think about later.
+9. **Courteous.** Even under time pressure, courtesy costs little and impresses people a lot. It's not about whether working with the person is easy or difficult; it's about setting the right tone.
+10. **Cooperative.** Look for opportunities to get people involved in the resolution of their own and others' problems.
+11. **Someone with an internal locus of control.** Catalysts concentrate on solving problems, not bestowing blame. Treat the situation as the problem, accept the users for who they are and try to figure out how best to help resolve the difficulty.
+12. **A user.** Remember that you're not in charge. Everybody runs their own little corner of the world. Let them do the job they're capable of. Just help the process along as unobtrusively as possible. Other catalysts are users as well, and nobody is perfect.
+
We're all just here to do our best to keep things running well.
projects / irc / freenode / web-7.0.git / blobdiff