So I go into a chatroom with no participants on AOL with AOL 8.0+, and I notoice a new icon next to my name. And some controls I have never seen before.
Turns out I am now the owner of the room. Which means I can kick people out (instant ban when I do). Then there's an extra tab next to the user list to remove people from bans. I can close the room too.
And I thought "What are they thinking?" They're inviting all the IRC politics with robots, bans, take-overs, ops, giving ops, name-servers, feuds, and vicious, vicious scripting wars. Then I notice something interesting about how the UI is shaping this experience: ownership is non-transferable. When the owner leaves, he just leaves.
Think about that. Completly changes it. And encourages people to be logged on as channel owners over their broadband forever.
