I've been looking for a good opportunity to bring this up amongst people generally, and the opportunity presented itself the other day with a complaint I received about my own channel.  Let me explain:

A highly respected member of another channel came into #apple and, despite #apple having nothing to do with hackintosh, and actually specifically forbids helping people with them (as emphasised by a BRIGHT RED ENTRYMSG) he proceeded to ask for help with something hackintosh related, where he was, of course, responded to rudely (and depending on the time of day and who noticed, would have been kickbanned out).

What was put to me was that they found it frustrating that such "polar-opposite channels/policies exist on the same network and only one is willing to help people from the other side".  This is what I replied:

<Currawong>    why?
<Currawong>    irc networks are full of channels about different things
<Currawong>    this isn't just a hackintosh network...it was merged from two networks, one being mostly hackintosh
<Currawong>    there are channels here (mostly secret) that have nothing to do with computers, for example
....
<Currawong>    i think people are still used to the idea that this is a hackintosh network
<Currawong>    maybe because the opers run the channels mostly
<Currawong>    and are associated with the forums etc
...
<Currawong>    in the most positive way, i don't care about the hackintosh side, but that means i wont disrespect people doing things i wouldn't do myself
<Currawong>    what people do in their own channels is their own business
<Currawong>    that's also why people in #apple who hate hackintosh with a passion wont go and troll in #osx86

...
<Currawong>    you'll find it amusing
<Currawong>    an irc oper came into #apple and was told off for something
<Currawong>    and banned
<Currawong>    so nobody is immune
<Currawong>    if someone banned me from a channel, i wouldn't care, it's their perogative
<Currawong>    i'm trying to get people to understand that the channel rules
<Currawong>    it's the domain of the owner
<Currawong>    only a couple of opers can override channel settings

Note the parts in bold.  The wording is crap, so let me say it another way: The channel comes first. The channel owner is king. Forget for a moment the specifics of what I talked about above and apply that generally.   The only time the bold text above is overriden should be if the channel is a botnet channel, is running an fserve or the like (which breaks network rules) or has been abandoned by the owner yet is still active.  I don't care about politics and games and all that crap, I'm entirely practical.

And yes, you can PM me.