best practice: learning by doing :-)
IMO, it's not enough for an op to know all the kick stuff. A good op should know what's happening behind the stage. A good op should know
why this or that would work resp. would not work.
As for myself, after a futile search on the the web for a good tutorial/reference I did it this way:
- look for an irc-server that would allow multiple login with different nick names. the services should provide you with help information (not every server does it). Your can access this help by typing
/msg chanserv help [commands]
/msg nickserv help [commands]
/msg memoserv help [commands]- login and register your nick
- register your own private test channel with
/msg chanserv channel password descriptionnote that you must identify yourself as channel chan owner to get owner privileges:
/msg chanserv identify channel passwordafter having done this, you are the god of your channel. read the help offered by the server carefully and test everything. Register an second nick and add it to the channel access list as auto-op. Login with this nick & join your test channel. Open another mIRC instance and join the channel as normal user.
And now: just play around! Learn how to set modes (more e.g.
here). Learn how to grant different rights and how to undo this. Try out different user masks when banning. And learn how to unban yourself after you have banned the bad guy using the host part in the user mask ;-)
When you think that you've got enough practice please don't forget to unregister the channel (/msg chanserv drop
channel).
While doin this, please never forget the most important thing: a good cop should be able to deal with his gun perfectly. Everyone can learn such technical stuff. But a top cop should have the ability to de-escalate a conflict peacefully... I know... in many cases it's not possible ... wild wild west channels... ;-)
In addition, I'd like to underline the intent of sparta's posting (see below):
As an op, you don't deal with nicks but with real persons with all their intentions, feelings, hopes, and wishes. They are as real as you are. Never forget this.