irc.ephemereal.com / #op9

[Panhandle Martinez]

Manifesto and Proposal for Outpost Nine official IRC chat

Given the growing popularity of Outpost Nine and the increasing size of it's user body, it is natural for us to branch out into other forums for interaction, like an IRC chat. As you can see, forumites have been mentioning the possibility of an official channel for some time now. I believe a great way to do this would be to run our own IRC server, or network of servers, as a community. Let me briefly describe some of the advantages in this.

1. A community-run network means that we can have full control over the administrative duties in maintaining an IRC network. It allows the easy and natural extension of the hierarchy of power at OP9 (i.e. Azrael -> appointed mods/admins -> forumites) and gives us full control to restrict misbehavior at the network level.

2. My server is fast, stable and reliable. I have a dedicated T1 and uninterruptible power supply failing over to a gasoline generator. Right now, an issue like netsplits is an impossibility on my network. As it becomes possible, other OP9 forumites may add to the network, increasing our resources.

3. We eliminate issues with autokill and K:lines because we can control them ourselves. Therefore everyone at OP9 should be able to connect to our servers without having to worry about an autokiller.

4. Choice of IRC server software. I use UnrealIRCD because it is the best. It provides many net-safety countermeasures like IP address cloaking, secure encrypted communication, and encrypted passwords (one-way md5 algorithm).

5. At Az' discretion, we can appoint IRCops (wouldn't you like to be one?) to share the rewarding challenge of maintaining an IRC community.

I encourage you to test my server at irc.ephemereal.com. If you are a Windows user and do not have an IRC client, please download this free one from my server. X-chat is my IRC client of choice on Windows and Linux, though later Windows builds have become disappointingly non-free. This program is free to use and modify and distribute; there are no shareware gripes or time limits.

http://www.ephemereal.com/xchat-2.0.9.exe

I encourage the forum moderators to read and consider stickying this topic.

[General_Admission]

excellent. mIRC expires so this is great.

I sound more and more like a Japanese girl with every post.

[Panhandle Martinez]

I do need to note that right now the server should be considered FOR TESTING PURPOSES ONLY. A lot of stuff is still broken but it mainly amounts to tying some loose ends together.

[Glitch ErrorWeaver]

A. On Blitzed, operators can already be set. There's no need to have an entire server with ircops and whatnot for a main OP9 chat; one channel is sufficient, and ergo, only chanops need be set. If anyone wishes to create other channels (as would be otherwise done the same way on your server), they can also do so on Blitzed.

B. Blitzed has (as far as I can count) at least 5 different servers, all also running T1 or greater. Netsplits happen so rarely on Blitzed that when they do, it's hardly even bothersome. They also tend to resolve rather quickly, too.

C. We don't have to worry about outright killing someone from the network; a simple +b in the channel is sufficient.

D. The "security" measures in Unreal are inherent to almost all IRC servers. Sure, you don't get IP CLOAKING, but who cares? Your IP is broadcast anyway; anyone with enough malicious intent to want to hack you won't be hindered due to an IRC protection anyway...

E. IRCops are unnecessary. Global moderators will have SOPs in the irc.blitzed.org channel #op9 (meaning they can add anyone they want to AOPs or lower).

We already have a channel; debuted last night, and since then, was full of late-night chats. No need for redundancy. Just merge into irc.blitzed.org channel #op9 =)

[Panhandle Martinez]

Sorry if I'm not very coherent right now. I've been awake for a really long time. Let me respond to some of the good points you made.

A. Just having chan ops privileges is nice until some script kiddie manages to find his way around ip and host mask bans set by the Ops. I don't know the situation at Blitzed but on many networks I've been to it can be impossible to get the IRCops to react to this and stop the abuse. So I still think it would be a good idea for OP9 chat to have network-level admin privileges, particularly during this time of epidemic popularity. If Az advertises an official channel, lots of people will be in and out. Some nice, some not.

B. I guess I don't have anything to say about it, it's a minor point anyway. Netsplits don't bother me all that much but I once set up a server for a community that hated netsplits and wanted to get off a bigger network.

C. Sometimes it isn't sufficient. It's sufficient until greater countermeasures are required, and if you depend on someone else to administer the boom you may find yourself stuck with a destructive bastard in your channel.

D. IP Cloaking will not protect you from a 'real' or determined hacker, that is true. But it will protect Windows users from worms and the direct, automated harvesting of IP addresses by bots. This is worthwhile in my opinion, given how spammy some of the larger networks have gotten lately.

E. I can't say much else about this. IRCops aren't necessary until they're necessary. Let's have one or two decent people around to deal with problems.

Aside, I dont' have much of a personal interest in where this chat ends up. Given that I am going to Japan very soon I will not have much time or desire for chatting on IRC anymore. However I do want to help and I maintain that this is a good idea.

[Glitch ErrorWeaver]

A. No it can't. I've -never- had a problem stopping script kiddies, and I've used IRC for 6 years. It lies in the ability to set bans correctly. If they want to proxy in, they can evade kills and K:lines just as easily...

C. Again, it's always sufficient. I'm an op in quite a few channels; one of which has 100+ users consistently. I've opped in places with 300++ users during non-peak hours. We've never had a problem keeping the channel in order. Sure, we may get the occasional idiot who decides to join flood us, or proxy in against a ban, but having O-line or A-line won't change the effect at all. They'll still have to disconnect and reconnect with the new proxy; killing them only gives them one less button to click...

D. There are hundreds of millions of IRC channels over tens of thousands of servers in this world. Very few have active IP cloaking. The bigs ones -- EFnet, DALnet (I think), et cetera have -never- had IP cloaking. If automatic IP harvesting were to occur, then it can, and will, happen -anyway-. Plus, someone knowing your IP and sending you mypicture.jpg.exe doesn't mean you're going to accept the file. And if you do, you're an idiot who deserves to get hit with the virus anyway =\

E. They're not necessary.


Eventually, all of these chats will merge into one official unit. I think the place it's at now (Blitzed, with 9 users currently at 7.46 AM on the east coast of the US) is sufficient and optimal =)

[Panhandle Martinez]

Insofar as you continue replying with "no, they can't" and "no, they aren't" the points we have been arguing are moot.

So let me get to the broader question here.

You started a channel on some network yesterday, and you'd like for everyone on OP9 to default to it. I look at that channel and think, 'we can do better', which was my motivation for spending the past few days bringing up a server.

I can't grasp your logic. If IRCops are unnecessary, why do they exist? They've been around a lot longer than you have, and chances are I have too. If IP cloaking serves no purpose, why in the world would the unrealIRCd team spend effort to code and maintain it? Your arguments implicitly concede my point, which I don't even really care about since I'm not here to argue.

But since you provide no reason why we shouldn't use a community-run IRCd, then I become curious just specifically why you are opposing me. Ideally it would be nice to have your support since you are obviously knowledgable and wise in the ways of IRC. Why not work together on this and do something original and extraordinary?

[mugen]

it would be nice if someone explained how irc works :S

[Panhandle Martinez]

IRC means Internet Relay Chat.

It's a powerful and well-established protocol for programmers to write chat servers and clients, with over a decade of development and improvement.

With your IRC client, you issue commands beginning with a forward slash, such as /server (irc.ephemereal.com) or /join (#op9), omitting parentheses because these are just examples. Channel names are prefaced with a pound sign # so as to distinguish them from user names and server names. To say anything in a channel, just type in the same area without a leading slash.

You basically use your IRC client to chat in a channel with a persistent state and administration. You can also send files and do other things like register channels and usernames, called nicknames. Changing your nickname to anything is accomplished by /nick (name).

Within a channel you have users with different levels of privileges. This will be indicated in different ways depending on your client, but with xchat color'd dots are assigned to users with elevated privileges. There are channel Operators (Ops) which have total control over other users in a channel. They can ban, kick, and invite users, as well as setting various 'modes' to the channel. Users with "Voiced" +v status can speak when the channel is set to +m moderated.

With some IRC servers you can even assign different levels of channel Ops, but the highest level are the network administrators which are called IRCops. It is their responsibility to maintain the server/network and deal with abuse such as the illegal trading of contraband or users who make problems of themselves by hacking or otherwise threatening fellow users.

[Iekleane]

The point is there is already a chat client up and the fact that I've spent alot of my time in the chat telling people how to do seperate things means that most of them don't know what that stuff if or they just don't care. So there really is no point to changing then channel what so ever.

[Panhandle Martinez]

I forgot to mention one important benefit of maintaining our own server/network, and that is:

We can easily use our own name for it, like irc.outpostnine.com or irc.outpostnine.net. That, I believe, would save a lot of confusion in the end.