freenode-irc-drama-and-goodbye.md

hi, and goodbye

The past few weeks has not been fun on IRC, the drama based on false information and assumptions has been insane. I've almost entirely been silent on the drama because I know the fallout that would happen if I spoke up.

A quick TLDR - I'm quitting all IRC development. KiwiIRC project lead, IRCv3 technical board, supporting the multitude of IRC networks, the lot.

Many people seem to think that I am supporting one side in everything that is going on, so just to be clear: I am not supporting any side of the current freenode drama - there is so much false information going around from everywhere that it is impossible to support anybody.

Woo freenode drama

Throughout this I will say negative things about both tomaw (ex-freenode head of staff) and rasengan. I still consider both sides friends of mine and we have worked together well in the past. This is purely what has been happening in recent weeks and I hope both understand this.

Both tomaw and rasangan messaged me for advice on a growing argument (at the time it was re. freenode DNS access). Both sides of the argument were reasonable from their respective perspectives, and at the time during this call this was cleared up and understood.

Note: While I was asked if I wanted to be part of this freenode future by rasangan, I had always declined because I don't personally want to be involved there. I had literally 0 to gain from this mediation between freenode and rasengan.

What I helped rasengan put together as a proposed idea for freenode:

• A more structured staff and board (at the time, and confirmed by tomaw in the call, it was just a head of staff and thats all)
• Looking into the possibilities of a decentralised IRC network (this was a very high level idea, nothing much more was planned yet)
• Looking at the possibility of joining an established, open source foundation to help re-establish IRC over newer platforms amongst other possibilities
• Offering freenode staff mental health support with a third party organisation because the amount of trolls and abuse that staffers get takes a real toll.

Once in place and everything settles, rasangen offered to then step down and let freenode do its thing. Tomaw was receptive to these ideas and agreed to go over a written down version of this. Everything was civil and calm again at this point.

What was very alarming, however, was the attitude from the freenode head of staff and how this was being handled. The ego, willing to have freenode destroyed because he wanted to "win" an argument over DNS access that was a silly miscommunication to start with.

After discussing the freenode structure changes with rasangan, freenode decided to make some structure changes on their own anyway. They are of course perfectly in their right to do so - but the lack of understanding the optics of this while planning a re-organisation already was surprising.

1618864289886|prawnsalad|like, im not on either side and purely just trying to keep things civil, but thats not gonng go so well lol
1618864382773|tomaw|Then he can take it up with me. I'm trying to make this better, he wants to make this better if he wants to fight me on that we'll have it out.
1618864468771|tomaw|If he wants to hurt freenode then that's a different thing
1618864510179|prawnsalad|alright. im gonna bow out of this and leave you both to it. i hope for the best but i really think this been handled pretty badly for the record. ill let andrew know the same thing
1618864535362|tomaw|you don't think I can win this, do you?
1618864537088|prawnsalad|this isnt my fight, and ive nothing against either side for so you know
1618864583729|prawnsalad|its not about winning. and its that that makes me realise i should have no part in this
1618864618389|tomaw|what do you mean?
1618864721766|prawnsalad|you want to "win" at any cost it seems. you mentioned this before too. things were calm and settled and the way this reorg has just come about and blogged yesterday underhanded the whole thing

1618865531365|tomaw|he doesn't want to hurt freenode
1618865560003|tomaw|and anything he does that hurt me hurts freenode.
[..]
1618865590396|prawnsalad|tomaw != freenode
1618865607523|prawnsalad|im stopping here now. im not getting involved any further
1618865648739|tomaw|thank you for getting involved as much as you did, I appreciate it

It was this point I stepped out entirely - knowing how this was going to turn out. Both sides had valid points, both sides extremely bad at communicating, both sides unable to work together.

Fast forward probably a week or so, both sides have legal involved, both sides attempt to silence each other. There is no one side doing harm here - both are actively involved. The biggest difference is that one side has expensive lawyers, the other side has a thousand+ strong echo chamber.

I'm not saying either side was right or wrong - there was false information going around like crazy that many bought into without thinking.

I do, however, completely regret trying to help this situation. Former freenode network director had also tried to mediate but also regrets doing so because of the hatred received for getting involved.

Getting dragged into the drama

As the firestorm grew on freenode I actively tried staying out of it. Speaking as little as possible. Public channels had high emotions, discussion was not welcome - everybody had their minds made up already based on whatever they had heard. Most of which was incorrect information but once you have a 1000+ strong echo chamber that causes more people to believe anything. To repeat something I mentioned earlier - I am not picking sides here, both sides were fuelled by miscommunication and believing false information.

Several people would ask me privately what was happening, this is as far into it as I would go.

1621027169855|mst|... dafuq
1621027191242|prawnsalad|hm?
1621027337910|mst|what the flying fornication is going on?
1621027459121|prawnsalad|im not getting involved. theres lies and bs from everyone involved, from all sides. i tried to help out and mediate a middle ground a few weeks ago but that didnt go well so ive decided to not have any further input, sorry
1621027509331|prawnsalad|its sad path its all gone and it legit makes me frustrated. so, yea.

Meanwhile in public channels, people were using my messages from private channels in the past to help push false information. Even more frustrating, and causing me to physically shake as I watch this unfold as I knew I couldn't say anything without getting the mob turned against myself, but knowing what was happening was untrue, and now my name being dragged into it.

(Tiny bit of context, The Snoonet network was sold by its founder, didn't explain to the network staff, then I had to explain to the staff (i think roughly a year later) what had happened as clear possible, I still get blamed for selling the network though). Back in #freenode:

1621011990276|rasengan|Snoonet is a perfect example of where I have not in any way attempted to affect any kind of change.  I lost my own channels on snoonet due to policy, and didn't protest or even say a word.  I adhered to policy.
[...]
1621011996798|jess|see the log andrew
[...]
1621012098975|jess|[01:09:43] <prawnsalad> let me put it clearly, Snoonet was sold to LTM. all Snoonet data was sold to LTM a while ago. way before me. there was no autonomous agreement - i have checked, multiple times. i an now explaining all this to you.
[...]
1621012218555|jess|[01:07:18] <prawnsalad> A_Dragon: again, Snoonet is not only snoonet anymore. it hasnt for some time. unfortunately people have communicated this to snoonet staff in past properly. im trying to correct that.
[...]
1621012275881|joepie91|[01:00:29] <prawnsalad> A_Dragon: then im sorry to bring the bad news, but snoonet *is* an ltm owned project. i had nothing to do with that. but thats how it is

Pastebins started appearing with the false information, stating that I was part of the takeover of networks

1621018234163|TheWhisper|Here's the real TL;DR https://litter.catbox.moe/2mfpli.txt

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Flitter.catbox.moe%2F2mfpli.txt&sxsrf=ALeKk033U_AkKHN5oD1Tk8hmnr_WGLx5LA%3A1621862188724&ei=LKerYOe4K5LjUtLqiNAG&oq=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Flitter.catbox.moe%2F2mfpli.txt&gs_lcp=Cgdnd3Mtd2l6EAM6BwgjELACECdQiCtYzS1g7S5oAXAAeACAAYYCiAHyA5IBBTEuMS4xmAEAoAEBqgEHZ3dzLXdpesABAQ&sclient=gws-wiz&ved=0ahUKEwjn_oe9s-LwAhWSsRQKHVI1AmoQ4dUDCA4&uact=5

People start digging through my projects trying to find anything they could to cause more drama, causing project maintainers who also wanted nothing to do with the drama to step and nip it in the bud as soon as possible.

1621098499985|rbraun|prawnsalad: hey how'd kiwiirc manage to get relicensed from AGPLv3 to Apache?
[...]
1621098735107|itsonlybinary|rbraun the second link is a total rewrite of kiwiirc in vue.js, the first link is the old nodejs version
1621098817903|rbraun|itsonlybinary: would be interesting if they shared any code, because rasengan is distributing an "IRC.com mobile app" on testflight without source code provided
[...]
1621099756652|prawnsalad|rbraun, as itsonlybinary mentioned, the old agpl version of kiwi is not the same project. a rewrite happened and any code that is shared had permission from the authors. the mobile app youre talking of is also using the open source code under the github.com/kiwiirc/ repo, which i had done. nothing todo with rasengan there. feel free to ask about it in #kiwiirc though
[...continued digging but the same topic...]

Several posts were made on Hacker News, to which I would have to defend myself in the comments again. Followed by people creating accounts just to reply to me with logs from private channels again to help push the false information. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27247212 Never actually making any claims, but always pasting out of context log snippets to try support false claims.

Extra fun fact: That comment was actually made by a Libera.Chat staffer while I was actively helping them on IRC with their web based IRC client.

Spilling into IRCv3

IRCv3 is a fun workgroup, lots of interested people with heavy thoughts on how things should be which makes for lively discussion over time. I admittedly have been involved in these lively discussions.

There is an inner circle that has become (what looks like) a close friend group. Speak against one of them and you have a lot of people against you. One of these people have came up a few times above, jess, Libera.Chat staff. They were recently proposed to join the IRCv3 technical board to which I express that somebody actively involved in trying to harm other technical board member projects without merit should not be given that opportunity ircv3/ircv3.github.io#372 (any other circumstance and I would have entirely welcomed this addition, jess contributions have grown a lot in the past year). I had purposely refrained from posting logs publicly here because it would have simply caused more drama - not that this helped.

This upsets a lot of people, and after explaining (my first comment in #ircv3 for over a week if I remember) that the issue is being handled privately and by the technical board chairman, a prominent member has already decided who should be silenced and who should be welcomed based on... I don't know what.

(A different log format than previous due to using a different IRC client at this moment)

[13:03:52]  prawnsalad: dan-, everyone is trying to keep that thread clear, please do the same. as you said yourself - its being handled already. ive passed the info to jwheare so now it can be handled. 
[13:04:26]  dan-: shut up, I've made my comment

Nice.

--

IRC has always had mob mentality and large echo chambers depending on the groups of people you are with. What all this drama has shown me though is that there are more illogical, emotionally run, people hiding facts and trying to be sneaky than I thought at the same time. So many assumptions built upon assumptions and then run with it.

The trolls, the people falsifying logs, the people so angry that they don't want to believe anything else, over time this wears you down and eventually you wonder why you are even involved any more.

The anxiety of even touching IRC development over the past ~12 months has been increasing, now after years of IRC development, supporting many prominent and smaller networks, sponsoring financially, helping projects get sponsorship if they were interested, it's not something I want to be involved with anymore. Getting dragged into all this drama and the aftermath that comes of it will not do my mental health any good. It's not a good place. I will be resigning from the IRCv3 working group, standing down from the KiwiIRC project lead, and ending my IRC involvement with any network or project.

kiwiirc.com has roughly 4 million monthly active IRC users on thousands of general social websites and networks. I have not yet decided what will happen here. It will always offer the IRC client and it will not be sold, but it has been expensive to run (trolls, spam, floods, ddos, maintenance, etc) so it may be scaled down in some form. Or it may be passed on to somebody trusted that wants the financial, support, and maintenance burden. This is yet to be thought about.

~prawnsalad

@tallship do you mean the seizing of 700+ channels by Freenode staff including #ubuntu, #centos, #gentoo, #curl

5 of those channels were mine... We were trying to go a bit slower in order to avoid knee-jerk reactions and see what actually played out, but that move (and the lack of willingness to restore control) wrecked our ability to stay neutral. I'm not fond of how the new network is being formed, but it's definitely the far lesser of two evils. (We're still considering OFTC as a more long-term replacement...)

Indeed, I too felt this topic being a bit foggy, and wasn't sure whether the old or the new staff enjoyed the moral high ground... until the channels seizing. Including mine (which didn't block/ban/kick anyone nor advertised any future shutdown).

One does not dispel suspicions of a hostile takeover by performing a hostile takeover. One does not show support of free speech by stifling free speech.

In this round, the new staff suffered a moral defeat. And we IRC users/developers apparently did too. There go 15 years on Freenode.

Considering decentralized options of a sort that can't be taken over this way. Challenge accepted.

My main project channel as well.

We were trying to go a bit slower in order to avoid knee-jerk reactions and see what actually played out, but that move… wrecked our ability to stay neutral.

For me it's more the blatant intent thinly veiled as incompetence. Oh, you "forgot" to transfer the ACLs after changing a "topical" (non-project) channel's namespace, ensuring I have no control over the "replacement"? Didn't think a web framework running commercially since 2009 qualified as a project, eh? Yup, nope, not sitting around while this happens, this is insulting my intelligence. I've moved, and now have the tedious task of updating three dozen read-me files, which adds injury to insult.

My sister even dug up the k-drama that is why this guy is referred to as a prince—more and more often I'm noticing, ironically.

I could find no single-handed slow clap GIF having the right… gravitas. This man may not be entirely grounded. And not in the Emperor Norton kind-of way, something a bit more sinister.

We will miss you. I hope you somehow have actually managed to cut yourself off of IRC news and this gist, because the most recent drama wasn't good for anybody's heath, regardless of how uninvolved they wanted to be.

What everybody did wrong is joining Libera.Chat as I can see right now.

We should move somewhere else, not to people that managed FreeNode because - as we can see - all that drama is totally unclear to anybody. And I think we shouldn't trust Libera.Chat like we shouldn't trust FreeNode right now.

@tallship do you mean the seizing of 700+ channels by Freenode staff including #ubuntu, #centos, #gentoo, #curl

Didn't I?

One thing I can definitely add to this discussion is that we saw the light, and knew better than to provoke the situation with topic changes, so we're still running in parallel w/o any arbitrary intervention of the kind you mention. The writing was on the wall, and this has happened before over the past few decades - Sourceforge with VLC and The GIMP; and many others not worth mentioning it's just what happens.... when this happens.

But no, freenode is dead as far as we're concerned, and reflected as such in my Fediverse post on the matter (Freenode Commits Suicide - Evacuations Underway - Breaking News!) published right after the event in question began.

As far as people saying that they feel people should move somewhere else (short of providing support within other communications frameworks), it should be mentioned that if you wish to have your IRC and secure it to your specifications too, self-hosting something like Oragono or InspIRCd is simple enough for any project, since IRC itself fully supports connecting to as many different networks as one would like to. Just make sure you publish that on your respective project pages ;)

IRC has always had mob mentality and large echo chambers depending on the groups of people you are with.

This is not a problem with IRC per se. The problem is somewhere else. I think this is much worse on many of the proprietary communication channels - facebook, reddit, etc (I don't have any experience with facebook, but I do have some experience with reddit, eventually I've withdrawn completely from there).

Case in point #1: The US president election. I actually think this is a problem with the first-past-the-post voting system. There will never be more than two candidates (A, B) having a realistic chance of becoming president, any vote for a third candidate C is a wasted vote, many people vote for candidate B not because they like B, but because A is a worse option. Within this system it's a better strategy to smear the other candidate rather than promote own politics - it's very bad and it promotes schisms. It seems to become only worse and worse for each election. "If you're not with me, you're against me" seems to be a normal way of thinking in the US. I may be biased, but to me it seems like the most toxic people more often than not are from the US when schisms becomes a problem.

Case in point #2: Bitcoin was fascinating me quite a lot at one time, I observed it to be a programmer-friendly open standard for payments with some unique features. I used reddit to keep up with the latest news. At first I experienced it as a positive, vibrant community eager to promote Bitcoins as a means of payment. Eventually the environment degraded into two camps over some quite trivial protocol change (the hard coded 1 MB block size limit). It became so toxic and so bad that the loudest people at both sides of the schism rather wanted the hole bitcoin project to die than to admit a defeat, it became much more important to "smear" the "enemy" than to discuss possible compromises and solutions. People even went as far as to redefine the purpose of Bitcoin (as I see it, it was always meant to be a means of payment, and not a speculative asset class). I still think crypto currencies are superior compared to credit card payments, but I completely lost my motivation to promote Bitcoins or other crypto currencies due to this schism.

When I got into Bitcoin, I observed that it had some traction as a payment system. Quite some companies had either started accepting bitcoin payments or was experimenting with it, including Microsoft, Stripe and Steam. The market price of one bitcoin has grown a lot over the years, the actual value of bitcoins as a payment system has only been going downhill since then.

I think the situation with IRC and Bitcoin can be compared. Relatively "inelastic" protocols, difficult to upgrade it on the protocol level, conflicts on how to develop the protocols and software, schisms, network splits ...

Relatively "inelastic" protocols, difficult to upgrade it on the protocol level, conflicts on how to develop the protocols and software, schisms, network splits…

Two very different things often get conflated: the protocol or technology used for communication, and the software using that protocol to communicate, both client and server. IRC servers have a protocol for exposing server features and configuration to clients on connection, individual clients have their own configuration for things like default text encoding to use, and differing levels of protocol support and fallback conditions.

Case in point: my IRC client supports "fixed width" text styling annotation, in addition to the standard bold, italic, underline. "Fixed width" was introduced by IRCCloud, with that document being wrong that that's the only client to support that control code. Other IRC clients used by other users in the channels I frequent notice "X'd boxes" where those control codes should be. Two problems: 1. it didn't understand the control code, 2. it didn't sensibly hide ones it doesn't understand. That isn't on my client or the protocol.

Second example: two of the IRC clients I use support Discord/Slack-esque avatars. They implemented this by having the "full name" advertised by your client in the form Full Name <[email protected]> which mimics e-mail address formatting. The avatar is then looked up from Gravatar by e-mail address hash. This is in no way documented by the protocol, but a very useful client-based addition. Similarly, my clients support media embedding, including YouTube videos, not just images.

My own personal addition: client-side theme JS detects whole-messages in the form s/search/replace/ and will automatically apply the replacement to the prior message sent by that user, permitting simple inline typo corrections. For geeks in the room not running a client that performs edits, they see the regular expression and can mentally apply the correction; for me, it applies the correction. IRC is not a shared buffer that is editable like Discord, but I don't care, and it doesn't need to be.

My desktop IRC client is essentially indistinguishable from more "modern" and "capable" chat systems.

The market price of one bitcoin has grown a lot over the years, the actual value of bitcoins as a payment system has only been going downhill since then.

Fundamental failures of architectural design impacting scalability and security/trust, plus the interpersonal conflicts giving rise to "forks" and community banishments noted. It's surreal to see how upset people are willing to get over a speculative asset store that plays a "coin" on TV—it's not a currency, and fails by several measures as a form of payment processing. The block size issue is notable, in that it was an attempt to mitigate other problems…

Transaction delays, limited throughput, chargebacks, and the inherent threat of dominant mining power simply defining reality. Ref. (When >50% of your mining power actually do get together to sit at a single table, you've got problems.)

In terms of elasticity, IRC is a text-based protocol that is super elastic, given the client-side feature implementations I have described. Editing, media embeds, avatars… none of these require protocol-level changes, the same way there were no SMTP changes required to support S/MIME. (Message v. medium.) Edit to add: consensus blockchain double-entry bookkeeping is insanely useful, generally, for a surprisingly wide range of things. Troubles arise quickly if inappropriately applied.

Thanks for the insightful writeup prawnsalad.

Both networks still work for me, so I don't need to care about the fights between administrators.

@clort81 Given they've borked their registration databases (both channel and account, I had to re-register to prevent impersonation) you may wish to reconsider the choice to continue to use Freenode. There is evidence of monitoring of private communications; it can not be trusted for any use at this point, of any kind. The other posts linked there cover the progressive decline, and https://isfreenodedeadyet.com now reports "yes". The new "owner" broke it even after aggressively hijacking channels, and the utter failure to maintain a cohesive service is demonstrative.

Edit to note: it's also easy to interpret this as simply a vindictive move against those who left. Account creation dates that no longer reflect prior reality. As exposed within the linked postings, exposure of private information by way of recreating private channels publicly. This really, really seems like a child throwing a tantrum. Like those advocating so freely in favour of Freenode's behavior, not realizing that in not wanting to get played, they're being played. (Why would the alternative need to aggressively spam? Channels would move, they'd update topics, done. Consider that the aggressive spam may have been intentional—and not the activity of actors involved in that alternative—to drive negative reaction.)

What everybody did wrong is joining Libera.Chat as I can see right now.

Exactly, people who cry out loud their hate want you to follow them instead of staying with those who remain calm and continue living like they always were -- what's the logic to agree? But I have seen almost zero IRC users interested in thinking logically.

From the very beginning when I asked people "why do we move? what happened to Freenode?" the only thing they could say was "it's a 'hostile takeover'" -- "what does it mean?" -- "don't you know? rasengan is Korean prince" -- "so what?" -- "t's a 'hostile takeover'" -- "what?" -- /repeat. And even after months they still have nothing else to say to explain why they started it. No evidence that anything was done by rasengan at all when they started ruining the network with this spam and hate. He was guilty only in being Korean. While they were the real destroyers of the network. Ruined just because some single guy tomaw had a personal hate towards rasengan and called his army pf pawns to spread the hate based on nothing else than that he's said do be a 'Korean prince' on Wikipedia.

And this purposefully false echochamber copypasta about "channels being seized". Imagine that you all sit in the office and suddently you all have been ordered to start shitting and you do it, you shit your pants, your chairs, tables, the room is full of smell, the freenode stinks now, and so the cleaning lady now has to come and push you away, move your legs out from under the table, stay away from shitted chairs just to make her able to clean the things. It's so trivial -- did you ever clean your house? It feels like IRC users and channel OPs never cleaned their rooms and don't know that to make it easier for cleaning lady when she HAS to clean your office, you gotta get out for a minute and yes, stop your daily job in unplanned, emergency way because that's your collective purposefull diarrhea fault anyway. But instead of saying "ok ma'am" and go have a smoke or drink a coffee people started screaming like mentally handicapped that their office room is seized by a cleaning lady, wtf.

From the very beginning when I asked people "why do we move? what happened to Freenode?" the only thing they could say was "it's a 'hostile takeover'" -- "what does it mean?" -- "don't you know? rasengan is Korean prince" -- "so what?" -- "t's a 'hostile takeover'" -- "what?" -- /repeat. And even after months they still have nothing else to say to explain why they started it.

Can't google from where you are? That's awful

https://gist.github.com/joepie91/df80d8d36cd9d1bde46ba018af497409

https://gist.github.com/aaronmdjones/1a9a93ded5b7d162c3f58bdd66b8f491

Can't google from where you are?

In the first link there is nothing said that Andrew Lee did anything at all.
In the second link it says that he just hired some sysadmin that they didn't drink beer together before and that's against their view on how people are to be hired for a job.

Funny how staffers and their pawns register fake github accounts for copypasta.

Pawns and shills abound. Self-awareness in public statements is sadly wanting.

• https://gist.github.com/prawnsalad/4ca20da6c2295ddb06c1646791c61953#gistcomment-3758912
• https://gist.github.com/prawnsalad/4ca20da6c2295ddb06c1646791c61953#gistcomment-3815296

Or just scroll up. That second one is fairly recent. I initially debated bothering to respond to a lazy troll, but the response isn’t for them. It’s for anyone who might be convinced by such an obvious plant. Edit to note: it’s almost like the evidence of abuse and careless mismanagement is plentiful.

In the first link there is nothing said that Andrew Lee did anything at all.

Only dozens of paragraphs full, as well as loads of links to more documents with dozens of paragraphs full each. I can see how you could miss something small like that.

fake github accounts

Yes, I'm totally a fake account that registered 6.5 years ago in anticipation of this year's nonsense. The long game, truly.

What fascinates me is how the whole staff quitting at once, as well as all the communities bailing out of Freenode, are somehow wrong and snakes, but this one sketchy Andrew Lee dude is a shining paragon of Right And Truth, somehow

@Atario Your first complaint is that I used words to describe something. Off to a great start. That the primary complaint revolves around language encourages me to think that English may not be your first one.

Your defence to being fake is to point out the age of the puppet‘s face you’re using. Excellent argument.

Your final paragraph is convoluted enough to be outright ignorable. See, there’s a reason everything I wrote above isn’t for you. It’s for everyone else, because you are either too close, too personally involved, or intentionally deceiving people. It’s too late for you. You appear to have enjoyed the Kool-aid enough to go back for seconds.

Step back from the computer, take a few deep breaths, and go for a walk. People have moved on, it’s just one platform service of many, and because people have moved on nothing of value was lost. Freenode simply does not matter. Not sure why that’d hurt you.

If your Freenode account had a similar age you were proud of, how did you enjoy needing to re-register and lose that? 6.5 years is quite short in the scheme of things, in this scenario. If you had bothered to read any of my words (another reason they largely aren’t for you) then you’d know you wouldn’t impress with such a number.

@amcgregor Not sure what you're talking about, I was calling out the Andrew Lee apologist

@Atario

Yes, I'm totally a fake account that registered 6.5 years ago in anticipation of this year's nonsense. The long game, truly.

Not quite what this sounds like, which sounds like ridicule of the idea of you being false and tricksy (darn hobbitses) but sure. The "sarcasm" following on in your comment is also easily misinterpreted. Regardless. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Score another win for dumb drama.

Hmm. Edit: upon review, the hesitation associated with that "hmm" is relieved and the list has grown by one.

i'm only here and reading this because apparently some official Freenode article used your message to "lament" about a "casualty" that IRC has "suffered" while invoking an "we're the good guys" behavior that did not help the situation in the slightest. and now new official articles brag about how "secure" it is, how it protects your free speech, how we're making IRC better compared to these guys, etc.

if what you're (@prawnsalad) saying is true, then it's truly maddening to see an integral part of IRC come crashing down in such a way. if true, i had no idea that there was this "us vs. them" insanity that i thought didn't necessarily exist until then. even today, this whole freenode situation has proven to be rather divisive, albeit with mostly strongly voiced disappointment on what freenode had become and how the freenode staff had handled the situation.

with that said, i'm actually comfortable with hanging around on the libera.chat network. if only because of how collaborative it feels when it comes to hanging around with the community, talking about them with programming issues i need help with in regards to what programming language i'm using to write whatever is on my mind, etc.

really, i only ever consider coming there because i want to learn about programming, and as of this writing i'm barely starting to learn how to write a python script. though i'm pursuing this as a hobby, just by learning and writing python scripts as i went i was already having a lot of ideas to the point of wanting to make a lot of scripts about them. and finding a community that just so happens to be there is rather fulfilling, especially when you look at how freenode is reinventing itself despite the current political climate that no doubt contributed to massive backlash towards the freenode staff and their relations to other projects from the many people that resided in freenode for who-knows-how-much-time-has-passed-until-then.

here's hoping things aren't looking too grim in the future!

@modusc896d352

compared to these guys

I do recall evidence that private communications may not be private on Freenode after the takeover. "These guys" personally hijacked my project's channel as a user operating as root. (Doesn't X-Chat give you a stern warning if you're doing that?) "These guys" deleted the user registration database out of either incompetence or spite. These guys are an asshole, and can not be trusted under any circumstance. 😜

The staff who resigned to form Libera did an impressive job, in my eyes, of handling the shock and jumping into action. I can not give them enough credit, nor thanks. There are other networks, but having a focus on open source projects and communities elevated the concept, and I am extremely grateful my projects can have a stable, open home to share.

…proven to be rather divisive…

I do believe most of us moved on rather rapidly. I kept hanging around until the above linked interaction which I strongly suspect was directly related to mentioning Libera in my channel's topic, then have only reconnected once to re-register my nick to prevent casual identity theft / impersonation. The scramble to address various failings during the exodus (user account registration database, really?) did not help, nor reduce stress.

here's hoping things aren't looking too grim in the future!

Welcome! You're a wizard, modus! Programming is writing choose your own adventure novels using words of power, able to enact change over any distance. Real magic! I'm glad to hear you've picked up the arcane arts as a hobby. ❤️ The future is always bright when you know the import antigravity invocation.

Very sorry to hear this. Kiwiirc was my first experience with IRC and it was a great one. You've made something wonderful and I am sorry to hear that all of the drama has forced you away from it.

There's never a dull moment on Internet Relay Chat.

The only thing keeping me going is that Discord is such a huge pile of s...