staffblog

One of the questions we get asked a lot in #freenode is “What’s the command to register my channel?”

This being the freenode staff blog, I’d like to answer that question the long way around

Step 1 - make sure you’re in the right place

The freenode IRC network has some very specific goals and objectives, and it’s intended primarily for developers of free and open source software. Please read these pages and make sure we’re the appropriate network for your channel and its users:

http://freenode.net/philosophy.shtml

http://freenode.net/policy.shtml#ontopic

http://freenode.net/policy.shtml#offtopic

Step 2 - register your nick

If you’re not identified to NickServ as a registered nick, then you can’t register a channel. Instructions for registering a nick can be found here:

http://freenode.net/faq.shtml#nicksetup

Step 3 - pick a channel name

Before you choose the name for your channel, you should be aware that freenode uses an unusual naming convention to indicate the difference between official and unofficial IRC channels. Please read our channel naming guidelines for more details:

http://freenode.net/policy.shtml#channelnaming

The short version is that official channel names start with one #, unofficial start with ##. If your channel is not an official one, please use ## at the start of the channel name, or you may be asked to move. Getting it right at the beginning is a lot easier, for you and for us.

Step 4 - check your channel is available to register

To check whether a channel has already been registered, use the command:

/msg ChanServ info ##channelname

If the channel is already registered, that will give you some info about it. If it’s not, you’ll get a message like this:

-ChanServ- The channel [##channelname] is not registered

Step 5 - create your channel

To create a channel on IRC, you just join it. If you’re the first person to join that channel then you create it (if you’re not then you’ll join the other people in there, and you won’t be able to register it unless someone gives you op status).

/join ##channelname

Step 6 - register your channel

The command to register your channel (once you’ve joined it and you have op status) is as follows:

/msg ChanServ register ##channelname

That’s all you need. The channel will be linked to your nick, and whenever you’re identified to your nick, you can gain full top-level access to your channel’s settings using this command:

/msg ChanServ identify ##channelname

Once you’ve registered the channel, you’ll see ChanServ set some modes in there. To configure which modes are always set, which modes can be set, and which modes can never be set, you can use the ’set mlock’ command. For instance:

/msg ChanServ set ##channelname mlock +sc-m

This would make sure that modes s (secret) and c (no colour codes) are always set, while mode m (moderated) can never be set.

Okay, so you’ve registered a channel now. That’s not the end of this post… there are a LOT of other things you should do as soon as you’ve got your channel registered.

Step 7 - read some useful webpages

http://freenode.net/channel_guidelines.shtml - our Channel Guidelines - useful info on how to run a good channel on freenode.

http://freenode.net/catalysts.shtml - about Catalysts - an incredibly important concept that makes freenode the great network that it is. Please try to be a catalyst whenever you’re on the network, but most importantly when you’re running your own channel.

Step 8 - read the ChanServ help pages

The ChanServ help pages really are actually helpful. If you’re running your own channel, you probably should have read everything in them - it won’t take long, a few hours at most, and then you’ll know all the cool things you can do with your channel.

/msg ChanServ help

Step 9 - consider registering your group with freenode

As well as registering your channel with ChanServ, it’s possible to gain a more official relationship with freenode, where we have an established contact person that we know is allowed to represent your project to us. You can read about Group Registration here:

http://freenode.net/group_registration.shtml

Step 10 - if in doubt, ask!

Finally, if you need help with anything to do with registering or running your channel, remember that the network staff on freenode are friendly and really do want to help you! You’re welcome to /msg us at any time to ask for help. Even better, come and ask your question in #freenode , where both staff and volunteer helpers hang out being helpful

http://freenode.net/faq.shtml#helpfromstaff

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From The Pragmatic Programmer:

Care and Cultivation of Gurus With the global adoption of the internet, gurus suddenly are as close as your Enter key. So, how do you find one, and how do you get one to talk with you? We find there are some simple tricks.

• Know exactly what you want to ask, and be as specific as you can be.
• Frame your question carefully and politely. Remember that you’re asking a favor; don’t seem to be demanding an answer.
• Once you’ve framed your question, stop and look again for the answer. Pick out some keywords and search the Web. Look for appropriate FAQs (lists of frequently asked questions with answers).
• Sit back and be patient. People are busy, and it may take days to get a specific answer.

Finally, please be sure to thank anyone who responds to you. And if you see people asking questions you can answer, play your part and participate.

This strikes particularly close to home as a freenode denizen. Everyone has some sort of problem and needs help, and it truly is a pleasure to help people who have done their homework.This quote was only a panel in the book, but documenting the especially tricky problems and staying around to help others ameliorates channel load and increases overall quality. It’s what makes freenode what it is.Thanks.

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Thank you to all those who have responded to our recent call for volunteers. We have been somewhat overwhelmed with the amount of applicants and are pleased to see so many interested in help keep freenode running. Due to the Head of Staff going on holiday, and due to the amount of e-mails received, we are running a little behind on replying to each and every applicant. Hopefully, everyone should have a response by the end of the weekend.

Thank you for your patience and we hope you will keep enriching freenode.

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It’s been just over a year since freenode saw it’s biggest shake-up yet, the passing of founder Rob ‘lilo’ Levin. It has been a challenging and interesting year both for freenode and Peer-Directed Projects Center, the not-for-profit organisation which owns and operates the network. There have been changes within the staff, there have been technical changes and soon we will see the change-over of both our Services package and our IRC daemon.

freenode is doing well — we’ve more sponsors than ever, and we’ve gained around 18,000 users. We’ve had interesting projects choose to use our services and we’ve had a lot of input from users on what changes they would like to see. This past year has truly shown freenode for what it is — a service provided by the community for the community. We’ve been joined by new staff, all of whom we’re pleased to have onboard. We’re making progress on the development side, both internally and externally.

PDPC has been more of a challenge. The NFP was fairly inactive previously and the change to having a active board who share a passion for the community we serve has been great, but it has also meant that we’ve had a lot to tidy up. While we are finally seeing light at the end of the tunnel, we haven’t quite gotten to where we want to be yet. However, I am confident that all the hard work put in by the board members, project specific volunteers and of course, our lawyers, CPA and accountant (without whom we’d be hairless by now), we will be able to do some truly spectacular things for the community in the coming years.

It has been a interesting and exciting year — I am proud and happy to have had the chance to work with such an amazing group of people: freenode staff, the PDPC board, past and present code contributors, projects using our services and of course the diverse and incredible user group freenode has.

I’d like to thank the PDPC board for sticking in there and for having the energy and drive to push on with what at times looked bleak and depressing, each and every one of the freenode staff members for the time and effort they have put in to keep the network running, our developers and code contributors for new services and IRCd (and of course, to the original Atheme and Charybdis developers for allowing us to continue work on already amazing services in order to make it fit our needs!), every project which uses our facilities, every single PDPC donor for helping us help the community, and of course our sponsors, without whom none of this would be possible.

I’d also like to thank the OFTC staffers for this year’s collaboration. It has been an interesting journey and one which I hope we will continue together.

And finally, I’d like to wish everyone happy holidays and a great new year!

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I promised you all that I would write an update when we’d had a chance to review things and speak with the IRseeK people. After a bit of discussion, both amongst freenode staff and with the management of the company which provides the IRseeK service, we are happy to announce that there will be a few changes.

1. The IRseeK service will be on a opt-in basis only.
2. The IRseeK bots will (on freenode) be cloaked and easy to identify.
3. Logs obtained prior to the service becoming opt-in will not be published on the IRseeK website without the explicit permission of the channel owners.

It is our belief that IRseeK and similar services can provide a useful service not only to the IRC community but to other interested users as well, and we (freenode staff) are very happy to see that IRseeK are happy to change their approach to one which is clear and concise rather than covert. I hope that the service can be of benefit to the projects which use freenode, and should you have any queries — or if you’d like to get in touch with the IRseeK people — don’t hesitate to talk to us and we’ll do our best to put channel owners in touch with the IRseeK project.

Again, we encourage projects which do publicly log their channels to make this clear to all users of the channel, by placing a note in the topic or with an on-join message.

I hope this solution is one which our users find satisfactory.

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We are currently looking to expand the freenode volunteer staff team – seeking people from across the target communities we serve.

Previous irc experience is a bonus, but not a requirement.

We ask that you familiarise yourself with the guidelines, policies, procedures and philosophies as per our website: http://freenode.net and assess whether you feel you agree with what we are all about. We are looking for someone who is able to work as part of a team but also happy to take initiative.

The current volunteer team is a diverse group of people – of all ages and backgrounds. We share a common passion and interest in Free and Open Source Software as well as Free Culture. We are looking for people who would compliment the current set-up and be a refreshing addition to the team – we love suggestions and ideas and appreciate it if you aren’t too shy to speak your mind!

The freenode network is run by a great team of volunteers, it’s day to day operations are overseen by the Steering Committee under the oversight of Head of Staff. While each freenode staffer has a individual role within the project; utilizing their strengths, experiences and interests the most important role on the network is that of the levelone support volunteer. We encourage all staff, regardless of seniority to spend as much time as possible on levelone duties.

We are currently looking for more staff to join us in order to better serve the groups and projects which use our services, if you should be interested please drop us a few lines to volunteering AT freenode.net letting us know a little bit about yourself, what projects you are currently involved with, why you would be interested in helping out with freenode and why you would be the right person for us to take onboard!

In addition to looking for volunteer staff we are also looking for developers – we are looking for people familiar with Ruby on Rails to work on our Group Management System (GMS) which is a web based dashboard to services, allowing group contacts of projects to better manage their namespace, cloaks etc.

We are also looking for people who could be interested in coming on board to work on 7 (Seven), which is the Charybdis based IRCD which freenode will be moving to. In addition to these, there are also other development opportunities available – and we would love to hear it if you have suggestions for something new/different too! If you are interested in helping out on the coding side, get in touch with us via code AT freenode.net and we’ll take it from there!

We hope to hear from you soon – while we will endeavour to get back to all interested parties, please keep in mind that we may not reply to your e-mail before we have reviewed a fair chunk of them. We are putting up a preliminary cut-off date of January 1st 2008, and all curious users should receive an indication of interest from us by January 15th 2008.

For now, happy hacking and er, happy holidays!

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After this recent article on techcrunch.com many of our users have contacted freenode staff to express their concern, shock, surprise and unease that IRseeK have for some time now been operating covert clients in various channels on freenode (and other IRC Networks) logging all communication and publishing it on their website.

We, freenode staff, are also surprised, not to mention rather upset, that this company has chosen to completely ignore our policies and perform actions which our users see as an invasion of their privacy. While we have contacted B & C Advanced Solutions, the company behind IRseeK, to request that they discontinue unauthorized logging on freenode and also that they remove any published logs, we have unfortunately had to take the additional step of blocking new tor connections while we pursue the matter further. The logging bots primarily connect through tor, seem to have no distinguishing characteristics that we can identify, and so far the company has not been willing to remove them voluntarily. We are currently removing the bots as we see them, and if you do spot a client you believe may be a IRseeK logging bot, please do let staff know and they will look into whether the client needs to be removed from the network. To all legitimate tor users out there, I apologise for the inconvenience caused and hope to have normal service restored as soon as possible.

Our website clearly states our policies on this topic, which have been published for several years. For those who haven’t read them recently, I quote one of the relevant sections:

“If you’re considering publishing channel logs, think it through. The freenode network is an interactive environment. Even on public channels, most users don’t weigh their comments with the idea that they’ll be enshrined in perpetuity. For that reason, few participants publish logs.

If you’re publishing logs on an ongoing basis, your channel topic should reflect that fact. Be sure to provide a way for users to make comments without logging, and get permission from the channel owners before you start. If you’re thinking of “anonymizing” your logs (removing information that identifies the specific users), be aware that it’s difficult to do it well—replies and general context often provide identifying information which is hard to filter.

If you just want to publish a single conversation, be careful to get permission from each participant. Provide as much context as you can. Avoid the temptation to publish or distribute logs without permission in order to portray someone in a bad light. The reputation you save will most likely be your own. “

And this perhaps, is where I feel that IRseeK has gone horribly wrong. I believe that this could have become a popular service had it been done in a way which promotes choice — operating on an opt-in basis could very well have meant that a lot of channel owners would have chosen to request an IRseeK logging bot in their channel so that logs could be referenced and looked at later.

However, currently there is no way to opt-in, or even to opt out. The bots aren’t easily identifiable and you’re not aware that they are present in your channel. Ideally, I would have liked to see:

1. Logging bots clearly identifiable as such.
2. Logging of channels occurring only at the channel owners’ request.
3. Channels that opt in to this service displaying, in a way which is visible to all current and new users of the channel, that the channel is being logged and the logs made publically available on the web. The channel topic and on-join notice could easily be used to this effect.
4. An easy method to remove logging bots from a channel should it join in error or a channel owner decide that they no longer wish their channel to be logged.

Perhaps, in this regard, they could have taken a leaf out of CIA’s book and become a lot more popular in the process.

To me, the biggest surprise is that the people behind IRseeK defend their actions and believe that they are entirely within their rights to do what they do in the manner that they do it. Leaving our guidelines aside for a moment, what irks me is this: freenode caters primarily to people from the FOSS communities, people to whom choice and freedom are important. For us, providing a service such as freenode to our community is important; our users give a lot, we share code, knowledge, hints, frustrations, laughter.. and we like to give back in the little way we can. It then does not feel comfortable or at all right to have someone intrude upon our privacy, sneaking into the circle and observing with the singular aim of publicising our conversations entirely without our knowledge or consent. By taking the route that they did, IRseeK has taken away our freedom and our choice. They have forced something down on us and in the process soured and poisoned a community which thrives on trust and collaboration. It has created a bad atmosphere and made a lot of people uncomfortable.

I am really sorry that this problem has reached our network, and I am really sorry for the way it has affected our community. I am also sorry for the way in which IRseeK choose to perform their actions, and sorrier still that we did not catch it sooner.

I sincerely hope that IRseeK will honour our request to stop attempting to log channels on freenode without the channel owner’s explicit permission, and I also hope that they will honour our request to remove logs already in their system.

Lastly, I would like to wish IRseeK well, and I hope that you re-consider your approach. I believe that if done properly, what you have could be turned into a respectable service which would be used by and appreciated by a lot of people.

As I said, we have gotten in touch with the people behind IRseeK and they have asked to have until this sunday (tomorrow) to respond. I will give you an update when we hear back from them and know which way the tide is turning.

For now, thank you for using freenode and have a great day!

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The channel ban, initiated with a mode change of +b, is perhaps one of the most recognised and well known features of IRC, dating back to the origins of the protocol. freenode has implemented a number of features that extend the basic nick!user@host mask format because we believe that the ‘kickban’ is outdated and there are better ways of dealing with disruptions to channel activity. On freenode you will find the quiet, where by replacing +b with +q you can stop a user from speaking in a channel but they can still read the contents of it. It has been found that this creates a more positive atmosphere in the channel that means better discussion can take place. There is also the realname ban, used via +d.

There is however a downside to the ease of banning users on freenode from channels and that is that it is easy to lose track of bans set in large channels. There is no feature to auto-expire bans in IRC and in a busy channel it doesn’t take long for a large list to build up. With multiple operators in a channel things can very quickly become confused and no-one seems to know why ban x was set and whether or not the user should now be unbanned. This leads to unhappy users and a channel that misses out on potential positive discussion. In addition, channels have a limit of fifty bans set at any one time and bans end up being shed arbitarily in order to set a new set for a new threat. This can lead to obvious problems.

This issue is made worse by the fact that +e, +I and +d lists also share the fifty slot limit. This means that if a channel has a large list of ban exceptions or invite exceptions, the number of bans that can be set in a channel is severely limited. In order to avoid having these problems in your channel, we encourage you to take care that bans are being set only when necessary (as bans are generally a Bad Thing) and also to take responsibility for your bans. By this I mean that when a ban no longer makes sense it should be removed.

It is recognised that in some channels these limits may be problematic regardless of how tidy the channel is kept and our server does have the ability to increase the limit. This can be granted by freenode staff but is done so on a case by case basis, and not frequently — doing so indiscriminately would not only encourage channel operators to overfill their banlists, but could eventually cause resource and performance issues on the servers — freenode currently has around 16000 channels active, so increasing the memory consumed by each banlist would have a dramatic effect. Channels that have a lot of stale bans are unlikely to be granted this flag. Keep tabs on your bans for a happier channel with happier users, and clear out your channel lists to speed things up for everyone!

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I would also like to take this opportunity to mention that if you are organising a conference or other event that will have many users connected to freenode at once or if you are a company or other establishment with many freenode users you can now request a larger connection limit by e-mailing your request, details and reasoning to ilines AT // NOSPAM \\ freenode DOT net. Conferences and large networks of users provide a substantial part of freenode’s active community and we always seek to accomodate those who are involved in this.

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As you are probably aware we are in the process of rehauling the IRCd and Services software running on freenode. While hyperion and theia have served us well for a significant amount of time they are also starting to struggle under the weight of our rapid growth (we recently hit 43,000 users, which is a number we hadn’t anticipated – that’s 15,000 more users than we had a year ago).

We are of course pleased that our numbers are growing and that more and more people and projects are finding a use for freenode; it’s a fantastic feeling to be able to give something back to the wider FOSS community.

Services wise, we’re currently testing new services on testnet and are close to letting you all loose over there for wider testing before we introduce the new services to the production network. Now, there will be a few changes, and while most of them won’t be noticeable, I felt it was a good idea to remind you of a couple of things.

• Expiration policy. In accordance with freenode policy a nickname which has been unused for 60 days or longer is classed as expired and can be dropped. At present we occasionally do a DB clean-up and remove unused nicks, but individual drops are also done by request when a user wishes to use a nick which has expired. Now, I’d like to stress that for a registered nick to remain registered and not expire you will need to identify to nickserv at least once every 60 days. So if you don’t wish to lose your nickname in a DB clean-up or a manual drop, please ensure that you identify.
• E-mail address. Our current services package does not require a valid e-mail address for registration, and we currently only require a set e-mail address before setting up a generic cloak. When new services go live this will change and a valid e-mail address will be required for registration. I would therefore like to encourage you to set a valid e-mail address in your nickserv info at your earliest convenience. This can be done by issuing the following command: /msg nickserv set email you@domain.tld. If you want to set your e-mail address as private (visible only to yourself and freenode staff) you can do so: /msg nickserv set hide email on

If as many people as possible can follow the above advice I’d be grateful – it would make the migration a lot easier for us, as well as for our users.

Expirations and e-mails aside, we’ve had a lot of feedback from projects and users who would like to see some changes to the services package – among other things a web-based frontend to services has been mentioned over and over again, particulary for project management. Group contacts would like a way to manage their project namespace, set project related cloaks, and the like. We are looking into OpenID and how to help users and projects which want to more easily integrate, for example, bugzilla and similar with their IRC infrastructure. We’re also trialling a new procedure for verifying group contact forms that may help to reduce the backlog somewhat; over the next few weeks we’ll be trying it out with a portion of the current queue.

In addition to everything I’ve mentioned, we’ve heard some really great ideas and suggestions for further improvement originating from our users, so I thought I’d ask you all what you would put on your wishlist. What can freenode do to better serve the communities? How can we improve irc as a communication and development tool for your project? For your users? I’d love to hear any ideas you may have and would love it if you dropped me a line to ideasATfreenodeDOTnet

Before I wrap up, I’d like to apologise for the instability of the network over the past few days. We have been under a pretty heavy DDoS attack, though hopefully it has all settled down by now. I’d like to thank our fantastic sponsors for the swift manner in which they dealt with things their end, for their continued support and for pulling together to ensure that we have the data required to pass on to the relevant authorities.

It’s pretty rare for us to be on the recieving end of an attack like that, and I sincerely hope it will turn out to be an isolated incident.

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Today saw the (hopefully temporary) resignation of one of our senior staffers; Andy Lindeman (alindeman). Andy has been an important part of freenode staff, both as an excellent part of the strong group of user facing staff and as a part of our infrastructure team. It’s sad to see him go, and we hope that he will find the time to rejoin our ranks at some point in the future, but as most of us can relate, being a college student you often find yourself with new and other priorities, be it studies or the social aspects of spending a few years away studying.

On behalf of freenode staff and the PDPC board I would like to thank Andy for the time and effort he has put in volunteering for us over the years and wish him all the best for the future. And when you finish your degree, do come back!

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