The freenode IRC network introduces a concept known as "channel temperature". Traditionally many IRC channels have a tendency to promote heated debates. This can result in these channels seeming unfriendly as heated emotions are exchanged.

freenode tries to combat this with a number of suggestions to try to reduce channel temperature. According to http://freenode.net/channel_guidelines.shtml, the following can help promote a calm environment:

• Avoiding use of channel op privileges except where neccesary
• Avoiding emotive speech, for example profanity
• Avoiding advocacy debates, eg. BSD vs GPL, vi vs emacs
• Criticising people in private, not publicly