#fedora and freenode registration

Paul W. Frields stickster at gmail.com
Thu Feb 11 23:07:54 UTC 2010


On Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 04:52:23PM -0500, Justin O'Brien wrote:
> On Thu, 2010-02-11 at 12:30 -0700, Kevin Fenzi wrote:
> > Just a followup here to this thread for input/comment. 
> > 
> > Freenode has switched over to their new ircd and the spam attacks have
> > been reduced a good deal, but still occur from time to time. 
> > 
> > The current setup is: 
> > 
> > People who are not registered with freenode who try and /join #fedora
> > will be redirected to the #fedora-unregistered channel. There they
> > will be given a welcome message explaining that they need to register
> > to join #fedora. The topic of the channel points to registration
> > information. A automated bot sends a message to that channel every
> > 10min with further instructions on how to register. Additionally,
> > there are some of the regular #fedora helpers in channel there to help
> > people get registered. 
> > 
> > The IRC Support SIG would like to keep this current setup in place.
> > 
> > Registering with freenode is a pretty easy requirement, very like to
> > signing up for a mailing list or creating a forum account to receive
> > support from those channels. 
> > 
> > The main support channel has been a good deal more productive with this
> > change I think, not getting distracted by drive by trolls, spammers
> > and other off topic junk. 
> > 
> > Does the Board (or any other interested folks) have any problems with
> > us leaving the setup this way?
> > 
> > Happy to answer any questions about the setup or alternative methods to
> > keep #fedora productive as a support resource for Fedora. 
> 
> I think that this puts a barrier between users that need help and those
> who can help.  I think we should just have a couple of trigger happy ops
> and take no BS.  
> 
> Fedora as is all about the community and i dont think that we should
> build a barrier between us and potential contributors.  

"Trigger happy" doesn't sound like a measured approach, although I
definitely sympathize with your feelings toward people messing up our
help channels. :-)  We bear at least some responsibility for making
sure people in the help channel aren't tricked or victimized by
attackers.  Since we can't guarantee 24-hour coverage by ops, it's a
good idea to try and make people there a little safer as a default.

Someone already suggested one way to mitigate the problem, which is to
spit out a more useful message when the user is shunted suddently to
the unregistered channel.  A URL pointing to a wiki page with simple
instructions for getting registered should be included.  The
admonition "register your nick" is not helpful or adequate.


-- 
Paul W. Frields                                http://paul.frields.org/
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