Opers' Blog - Moofspeak IRC Network

Channels, Rules and Opers

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Written by Currawong Wednesday, 28 January 2009 10:23

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.

 

Welcome to the Opers Blog

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Last Updated on Monday, 17 November 2008 07:53 Written by Cmos S. Cmoski Monday, 17 November 2008 07:42

Hey all.

In an effort to communicate a bit better with the community, have a place for random items of interest and other thoughts (if you even care!) from the Moofspeak Opers, I've created this new opers blog section. 


Any oper is of course welcome to blog here.

Anyway, I thought I'd start things out by offering few thoughts on the new Inspircd transition. Currently, Moofspeak is running UnrealIRCD, as it has done since it's inception. It's been a great IRCD, providing a lot of cool features. One of the big things I enjoy is Remote Includes. It allows you to define a remote server to host configuration files on, and upon a server rehash it reloads the configuration file from the web source.

We currently generate our configurations on a remote webserver via PHP. It's incredibly neat as if we add or remove a link, it just requires a simple /rehash of each server to propagate the new configuration information. The new server doesn't quite offer that functionality within it's stable release. I'm told the version 1.2 will support remote includes natively, however the current solution we'll be using is a simple cronjob to download the configuration data.

It isn't quite ideal, but there are a few reasons we're switching away from Unreal. First, Unreal is not actively being maintained. Although we appreciate Syzops continuing to maintain Unreal over the years, the new version doesn't really seem to us to have the code quality or speed of the development. Further, Inspiricd has a more active group of coders and their team will provide quicker fixes to security and stability flaws, new features, and such. The other reason is simple, the new version is looking incredibly good, and we'll be able to offer a ton of new commands to channel owners, opers, and expandability for our network.

Some of the commands are just awesome :). The new BOPM implementation will be much more effective in removing Tor proxies and the like from the network, we'll have greater control over DDOS attacks (this is not an invitation, you know who you are]), and cool channel management stuff like auditorium mode which allows for large scale channel management on WWDC weekend, for example. Also, we should see greatly enhanced stability and a lot of flexibility in modules we load on the IRCD!

I've answered a few of the objections on behalf of the network, but there are a few I'd like to address just from my personal opinion. The first problem we found on the testnet was with the venerable #% channel, in which the bot couldn't successfully +q people. We made a few code modifications, and with one simple module load we fixed the problem to allow #% to work as intended (and, technically making it a pure #% :P). (And I'm sorry mac-mini, we aren't coding in worthless IRCD modes so you can get the 'official' mode structure.) And to those who are just resistant to change, it's part of life (and especially IRC).

 

That’s all for now, I'm sure I'll update this a bit if people enjoy it..  I'm pretty boring, so feel free to yell at me in #moofspeak if there's something you'd like to see or have opers respond to. (No bans, LOL)

-cmoski