Freenode IRC operators now engaging in routine abuses of power(devever.net)
devever.net
Freenode IRC operators now engaging in routine abuses of power
https://www.devever.net/~hl/freenode_abuse
116 comments
Eh I feel as though you relinquished the channel the second you essentially shut it down. Why would freenode or any IRC server want to just keep a channel that is unused except to advertise a different server? I would understand more if it was some sort of specific channel that the name was clearly exclusively yours but its rather generic and a bot that many people here could also maintain.
Strikes me as sort of 'domain squatting'
Strikes me as sort of 'domain squatting'
Freenode broke their own policies to do this: https://freenode.net/policies
>Primary channels do not expire with inactivity, though they can be claimed at any time by a representative of an on-topic project with the appropriate name. Topical channels expire after 60 days in which no user on the access list for the channel has joined it.
##hntop is a topical channel, since it begins with ##.
>Primary channels do not expire with inactivity, though they can be claimed at any time by a representative of an on-topic project with the appropriate name. Topical channels expire after 60 days in which no user on the access list for the channel has joined it.
##hntop is a topical channel, since it begins with ##.
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The policy page you listed said no spamming. Your blog complaint says you spammed.
I really don't think that's going to fly.
People are concerned that you don't have the community's best interests at heart. Your actions say you don't have the community's best interests at heart.
All this lawyering corpspeak means nothing when your actions don't back it up.
If you want to prove us wrong, walk the walk.
edit:
Looking at the list of top10 channels[0], several of them have such notices in their topics. If this takeover was policy, can we assume you'll do the same to ##linux? Or is it a very selective policy only to be enforced when you have a personal interest or believe you can get away with it?
[0] https://netsplit.de/channels/?net=Freenode
People are concerned that you don't have the community's best interests at heart. Your actions say you don't have the community's best interests at heart.
All this lawyering corpspeak means nothing when your actions don't back it up.
If you want to prove us wrong, walk the walk.
edit:
Looking at the list of top10 channels[0], several of them have such notices in their topics. If this takeover was policy, can we assume you'll do the same to ##linux? Or is it a very selective policy only to be enforced when you have a personal interest or believe you can get away with it?
[0] https://netsplit.de/channels/?net=Freenode
"This channel has moved to Liberachat, effective immediately: irc.libera.chat ##hntop"
You and I have very, very different definitions of spam. I see a guidepost giving me direction.
You and I have very, very different definitions of spam. I see a guidepost giving me direction.
Are you implying that you are going to deny every community that envisages to leave your network to advertise to their users that they moved ?
If ##hntop was truly involved in spam, you would shut it down, not take it over.
You are losing trust with every word.
Where does it say that?
You have a valid point but in the IRC netiquette there's a strong (very strong) taboo against server/network operators abusing their permissions to interfere with channels, particuarly taking over a channel that is registered.
This is indicative of the broader problem: whereas the former staff treated Freenode as a community resource of which they were stewards (hence also the policy around abandoned channels), the new administration is clearly treating it as their personal sandbox to play in.
Cant edit this post on this HN client but just to note, personally I dont have much knowledge of freenode specifically so I dont know if this is exclusively a bad thing because its freenode and not slme other server.
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the primary argument here is one of trust
the original creator of the channel gained trust by their userbase to not do untowards things with the feed, like filtering out certain things
then they moved their project elsewhere and left a redirect in the old location
now rasengan has deleted the redirect and pretends nothing has happened, and as for trustworthiness ... note how in the screenshot at the end of the article, humblebot is killed after posting a link to this submission here
the original creator of the channel gained trust by their userbase to not do untowards things with the feed, like filtering out certain things
then they moved their project elsewhere and left a redirect in the old location
now rasengan has deleted the redirect and pretends nothing has happened, and as for trustworthiness ... note how in the screenshot at the end of the article, humblebot is killed after posting a link to this submission here
A channel is shut down when it is dropped or expires. There's no grey area about it, really.
Neither happened here.
rasengan, this is coherent, credible and serious enough to deserve a response from you, and this is an excellent place for it. I don't wish to draw conclusions from this without hearing your side. I hope you have time for that.
For reference, he has a HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=rasengan
and he even had submitted the mentioned channel last week :D
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27145315
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27145315
This comment feels doxxy.
Only if you reach as far as you possibly can to stretch that word.
Putting "=Username" at the end to see if the user has an account on the very site we're discussing this on is pretty far from documenting identifying information, no?
Putting "=Username" at the end to see if the user has an account on the very site we're discussing this on is pretty far from documenting identifying information, no?
Additionally, he's personally posted a statement about it here through that account[0] a day ago. It's definitely not doxxing if he already revealed his identity himself.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27234542
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27234542
doxxing, by definition, is revealing previously private information. On his hacker news profile he’s listed his email that links that account to him. It’s all public.
checking if someone has got an account on HN is doxxing now?
I don’t like seeing direct links to profiles in threads like this; I always worry that the comment section will turn into a stalking mob.
I bet he goes radio silent on this one. This is one of the worst sins that can be committed against an IRC channel by an admin, and no amount of BS is going to convince anyone he didn't cross the line by a million miles. Not sure how anyone is giving this guy the benefit of the doubt at this point.
Can we count https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27247959 as a response?
Andrew Lee has now unilaterally rewritten Freenode policy to retroactively justify his actions:
https://github.com/freenode/web-7.0/commit/1194a3e71a427a669...
https://github.com/freenode/web-7.0/commit/1194a3e71a427a669...
I'm always amazed at the amount of drama in communities like this, given that the absolute value of these channels tends to be so low.
I mean, we're not talking about someone hijacking an ad-rich youtube channel here. This is the "##hntop" channel. It reposts top news from... this very site. It's something anyone reading this comment can get for free by pressing the back button on their browser.
And yet someone still decides it's worth their effort to kick an admin (or I guess in this case force the channel registration) and steal it? Good grief.
I mean, we're not talking about someone hijacking an ad-rich youtube channel here. This is the "##hntop" channel. It reposts top news from... this very site. It's something anyone reading this comment can get for free by pressing the back button on their browser.
And yet someone still decides it's worth their effort to kick an admin (or I guess in this case force the channel registration) and steal it? Good grief.
I feel the same way, but I think it's really simple: people who care enough about being mods to become one are the same people who are likely to let it get to their head.
Mod drama on reddit for instance is fairly incredible in scope and dedication. For some people being a mod seems to be effectively a full time activity and getting to mod as many subreddits as possible an objective, regardless of whether you have any particular interest in the sub in question. It's absolutely baffling to me because you'd have to pay me to do that job, but clearly some people thrive on this type of power.
Mod drama on reddit for instance is fairly incredible in scope and dedication. For some people being a mod seems to be effectively a full time activity and getting to mod as many subreddits as possible an objective, regardless of whether you have any particular interest in the sub in question. It's absolutely baffling to me because you'd have to pay me to do that job, but clearly some people thrive on this type of power.
Not just someone, the "owner" of the network.
In my opinion, this is a graver offense than, say, someone using an exploit or similar to take over a channel. This person is supposed to be in a position of power and trust.
In my opinion, this is a graver offense than, say, someone using an exploit or similar to take over a channel. This person is supposed to be in a position of power and trust.
Often lowest stakes and highest drama go hand-in-hand.
Pretty much makes it even worse.
This is why expecting names (nicks and channels) on IRC to have any permanent meaning causes problems. The protocol was not designed for this (and I question weather it can be done in any reasonable way without a "benevolent dictator" kind of authority.)
DNS has the same problem amusingly.
I had the same thought I think it’s super funny I’m reading about IRC drama on here in 2021
I don’t know anything about IRC, but it seems more benign that that: the person who ran ##hntop abandoned it for another platform, so the guy who runs its sister channel, ##hnnew, recreated it, because they naturally go together. Calling this “abuse” seems like a stretch to me.
You can register channels, the point of which is exactly that this sort of thing cannot happen, or at least not trivially.
Of course, when you run the network, you can do what you want. But then, that's the point of the move.
Of course, when you run the network, you can do what you want. But then, that's the point of the move.
Yes, I can see that it’s a technical violation of the policy. On the other hand, OP explicitly abandoned the channel and then cried “abuse” when the administrator stepped in to resuscitate it. And now this very tiny tempest in a teapot is at the top of HN for us all to gawk at.
the concern is more about the impersonation.
It's like you had mysite.com, decided to rename it to a new domain and so put a redirect. And then the CEO of the DNS authority decided to take your domain for himself, put a copy of your previous site on it and pretended that you never moved it in the first place.
It's like you had mysite.com, decided to rename it to a new domain and so put a redirect. And then the CEO of the DNS authority decided to take your domain for himself, put a copy of your previous site on it and pretended that you never moved it in the first place.
It’s nothing like that. If you want a modern analogy, it’s like the moderators of a subreddit abandoning it, and the reddit admins deciding to keep it going anyway. It violates the expected wall between moderators and admins, but it’s hardly theft or impersonation.
But the reddit admins never take away channels like this. For an abandoned subreddit to be took away, it needs _time_. Just like on freenode (where the registration would eventually expire with the expiration of OP's nick). There, rasengan abused his services power to alter the registration without any respect of freenode' policies.
And he's justifying this as "spamming". Because OP's said in the topic of HIS channel that the channel moved to libera.
And he's justifying this as "spamming". Because OP's said in the topic of HIS channel that the channel moved to libera.
I understood it as: the channel was not dropped and recreated anew, but straight taken over.
this is semantics, overall. But the channel was dropped by rasengan, as chanserv channel creation timestamp implies. Taken over in chanserv ACLs or dropped+recreated is kinda the same thing tho, a straight take over.
freenode has a traditional policy for ##-namespaced channels to require a period of inactivity before they may be re-registered. Lee ignored this.
Suppressing news of a channel trying to move elsewhere, by administratively taking over the registration and then removing the notice from the topic, is pretty scummy.
He could've easily just joined his bot to the channel to keep the news going, fine. But removing OP's note about moving elsewhere is what rubs me the wrong way about this.
He could've easily just joined his bot to the channel to keep the news going, fine. But removing OP's note about moving elsewhere is what rubs me the wrong way about this.
It's not "abuse" as in "this guy is abusive to other people", sure. It does look like an administrative action that goes against community norms. If the authorization used for this action had been derived from community trust, it would be fair to call it abuse of the latter. In this case of course it's just another sad footnote in a sad state of affairs.
> I suggest adopting a simple protocol of never using Freenode PMs for any conversation at all. This protocol is both easy and convenient; if you want to talk to someone, you can simply PM them on another IRC network, since most people are connected to more than one network. If you don't know whether they're on another network, simply ask.
I'm a little surprised someone hasn't written some sort of plugin for common IRC clients to support at least minimal encryption in PMs.
I'm a little surprised someone hasn't written some sort of plugin for common IRC clients to support at least minimal encryption in PMs.
It's called OTR. Some clients support it, but in my experience they are not all compatible.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging
OTR is just one aspect of encrypted communications between parties.
I think OTR kinda works on IRC, but isn't widely used. Ultimately I think the conclusion is that adding an encryption layer onto something that by design is simple and unencrypted rarely leads to any good outcome.
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I mean... I wouldn't support the decision to do so, nor should others, but DCC Chat can be used to skip the relay without encryption being needed.
that said.. someone using dcc chat probably should consider encryption (if they use dcc at all) given that it could be sniffed elsewhere.
that said.. someone using dcc chat probably should consider encryption (if they use dcc at all) given that it could be sniffed elsewhere.
There is a fish implementation me and my friends used for years (used it first around 16 years ago) that had an implementation for every major irc client (or at least those I used namely irssi and weechat)
I am not seeing this post anymore on the frontpage, but it is not flagged either. Why is that?
the hn mods have moderated almost every post about the freenode takeover off the front page (several times off the #1 spot as well)
I think it's clear that, at best, they don't want this discussion on the site, or at worst, rasengan is demanding it.
Andrew Lee has sought to purchase/influence other similar sites in the past.
I think it's clear that, at best, they don't want this discussion on the site, or at worst, rasengan is demanding it.
Andrew Lee has sought to purchase/influence other similar sites in the past.
I've seen many of them on the front page, so this cannot be true.
That doesn't necessarily follow; they could manually downrank things as they notice items coming up, which would let things hit the front page temporarily. (Not saying this happens, just that that's not a strong argument against)
> I think it's clear that, at best, they don't want this discussion on the site
For what it's worth, there's a lot of drama mongering in the whole FN saga, and it's usually the same arguments repeated on all sides - the HN mods are known to push this kind of story down after a while. No need to resort to conspiracy crap.
For what it's worth, there's a lot of drama mongering in the whole FN saga, and it's usually the same arguments repeated on all sides - the HN mods are known to push this kind of story down after a while. No need to resort to conspiracy crap.
I’ve never used IRC before so maybe someone can explain what the problem is here.
My takeaway from reading this is that there are multiple irc networks. The author decided to move his bot and channel to a different network, and is angry that the freenode operator took back the abandoned channel.
Is it expected in IRC channels that whoever started the channel owns it forever? What do they do to prevent people from quickly founding a channel around a new topic and squatting on it?
My takeaway from reading this is that there are multiple irc networks. The author decided to move his bot and channel to a different network, and is angry that the freenode operator took back the abandoned channel.
Is it expected in IRC channels that whoever started the channel owns it forever? What do they do to prevent people from quickly founding a channel around a new topic and squatting on it?
Maybe here's an analogy:
Verisign does something that YC doesn't like, so YC decides they don't trust being on .com anymore and they should move from ycombinator.com to ycombinator.party or something. They set up a web server that redirects from news.ycombinator.com to news.ycombinator.party, so that people who were looking for the old name still find it.
Verisign decides that YC has abandoned the .com name, and points news.ycombinator.com at their own forum about news for hackers, with a target audience of fixed-point combinator enthusiasts. After all, "Y combinator" is just a term from a Haskell Curry paper.
I think the norms around IRC are very similar to the norms around domains (or Twitter accounts, or so forth) - even if you use a somewhat generic name, whoever first lays claim to the name is entitled to keep it and do as much or as little with it, unless they affirmatively release it, and using the name to point someone elsewhere is definitely not abandoning it.
Verisign does something that YC doesn't like, so YC decides they don't trust being on .com anymore and they should move from ycombinator.com to ycombinator.party or something. They set up a web server that redirects from news.ycombinator.com to news.ycombinator.party, so that people who were looking for the old name still find it.
Verisign decides that YC has abandoned the .com name, and points news.ycombinator.com at their own forum about news for hackers, with a target audience of fixed-point combinator enthusiasts. After all, "Y combinator" is just a term from a Haskell Curry paper.
I think the norms around IRC are very similar to the norms around domains (or Twitter accounts, or so forth) - even if you use a somewhat generic name, whoever first lays claim to the name is entitled to keep it and do as much or as little with it, unless they affirmatively release it, and using the name to point someone elsewhere is definitely not abandoning it.
> Is it expected in IRC channels that whoever started the channel owns it forever? What do they do to prevent people from quickly founding a channel around a new topic and squatting on it?
It's been a long while since I was a regular IRC user and my channel was banned from channel services for reasons, but my understanding is that all the registrations have timeouts. If non of the channel operators show up in some period of time, the registration is cancelled. I'd imagine somewhere between 7 and 30 days would be the norm though.
It's been a long while since I was a regular IRC user and my channel was banned from channel services for reasons, but my understanding is that all the registrations have timeouts. If non of the channel operators show up in some period of time, the registration is cancelled. I'd imagine somewhere between 7 and 30 days would be the norm though.
> What do they do to prevent people from quickly founding a channel around a new topic and squatting on it?
I don't think this is a huge issue for IRC communities.
Freenode in particular had a bureaucracy around #<name> channels to prevent this (and even that was rather ineffective in the single case I was almost-personally involved in), but ##<name> channels were explicitly more free-for-all.
I don't think this is a huge issue for IRC communities.
Freenode in particular had a bureaucracy around #<name> channels to prevent this (and even that was rather ineffective in the single case I was almost-personally involved in), but ##<name> channels were explicitly more free-for-all.
Freenode has rules about these things. Topical channels stay owned for 60 days after they stop being used. Redirecting people to another network has also never been a problem on Freenode. Freenode's new owner claims that redirecting people is "spam", justifying removal of channel ops.
Started my life on IRC what…over 30 yrs ago on irc.eff.org using a crappy 300 bauds modem. Back in the days there were no ads or tracking cookies on gopher, and first websites, only good stuff…, IRC had no drama and such crap. It didn’t last for long though, when undernet came along, and more kids were getting modems for xmas, dramma and powertrips started. Sad to say this is nothing new, human nature, that’s all.
> IRC had no drama and such crap
Your memories got nicer with time.
Reminder that the internet was always the internet, from 1994, although the story is about USENET: https://www.wired.com/1994/05/alt-tasteless/
Your memories got nicer with time.
Reminder that the internet was always the internet, from 1994, although the story is about USENET: https://www.wired.com/1994/05/alt-tasteless/
For people new to the topic, here’s a comment that tries to summarize recent Freenode events: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27237202
So many comments from folks who have never used IRC... makes me feel old
> I decided to move my channel, ##hntop, to Liberachat.
> This channel has moved to Liberachat, effective immediately
To be fair, this is a very gray area and is not a cut-and-dry example of abuse of power. The op did express that they were moving on to Libera. Is the expectation that someone could squat (as per the new channel description) a channel for all perpetuity, even if they no longer participate on the platform?
Conversely, rasengan really should have first had a conversation with the op, and did pull the trigger on this suspiciously quickly.
> This channel has moved to Liberachat, effective immediately
To be fair, this is a very gray area and is not a cut-and-dry example of abuse of power. The op did express that they were moving on to Libera. Is the expectation that someone could squat (as per the new channel description) a channel for all perpetuity, even if they no longer participate on the platform?
Conversely, rasengan really should have first had a conversation with the op, and did pull the trigger on this suspiciously quickly.
>Is the expectation that someone could squat (as per the new channel description) a channel for all perpetuity, even if they no longer participate on the platform?
It's like that on some of the less-modern networks like EFnet. For a long time there were no services to automatically grant channel operator status and so folks would either amass a network of trusted humans large enough to pass the +o flag between each other as timezones awoke and went about their days, and/or they would herd large flocks of bots to perform the same.
It's like that on some of the less-modern networks like EFnet. For a long time there were no services to automatically grant channel operator status and so folks would either amass a network of trusted humans large enough to pass the +o flag between each other as timezones awoke and went about their days, and/or they would herd large flocks of bots to perform the same.
Efnet and it’s non registered chaos is what drew me into computers and made me write my first lines of code. I really felt like a part of community having to hold channels. I learned so much about the underlying network protocols that made the internet work and went on to go to a vocation high school for networking. This story was actually confusing to me at first because I never really joined IRC servers that allowed the registrations of usernames let alone channels.
The policies on freenode are very clear about ##-namespace channels expiring after several weeks of being unused, or after the founder drops their account. The user hl still has his eight-year-old account, is still logged in, and barely a week has gone by before the channel was taken over.
freenode has always allowed communities to direct their channels to other platforms.
freenode has always allowed communities to direct their channels to other platforms.
That makes sense, thanks for the explanation of the expected process.
The pre-takeover policies, clearly.
They remain unchanged for now (as I write this post):
>Topical channels [ones that begin with ##] are given out on a first-come, first-served basis. They will expire if unused for a long time, see our policies for details regarding when this occurs. You can contact us on IRC with a request to take over an expired topical channel.
—from https://freenode.net/kb/answer/namespaces
>Topical channels expire after 60 days in which no user on the access list for the channel has joined it.
—from https://freenode.net/policies
Historical precedent shows that channels (both primary ones in the # namespace, and topical ones) are closed when they conflict with policies and there is no way to resolve the conflict, and closures are enforced by services, which restrict access to such channels for any users trying to join. I've both been in channels closed by staff, as well as had one of my channels closed due to such policy conflicts. My channel has since been reopened, once I showed legitimate interest to staff in complying with network policy.
>Topical channels [ones that begin with ##] are given out on a first-come, first-served basis. They will expire if unused for a long time, see our policies for details regarding when this occurs. You can contact us on IRC with a request to take over an expired topical channel.
—from https://freenode.net/kb/answer/namespaces
>Topical channels expire after 60 days in which no user on the access list for the channel has joined it.
—from https://freenode.net/policies
Historical precedent shows that channels (both primary ones in the # namespace, and topical ones) are closed when they conflict with policies and there is no way to resolve the conflict, and closures are enforced by services, which restrict access to such channels for any users trying to join. I've both been in channels closed by staff, as well as had one of my channels closed due to such policy conflicts. My channel has since been reopened, once I showed legitimate interest to staff in complying with network policy.
It doesn't matter what the written rules say if the group with administrative access just ignores them when convenient.
The rules as used in practice seem to have changed according to the original blog post.
The rules as used in practice seem to have changed according to the original blog post.
Please keep track of the thread.
Parent post made a claim that this was not an "abuse of power" and I was clarifying how it was indeed an abuse of power.
Apparently the policies are in the process of being redrafted in response to this, so in the future, what Lee did with ##hntop may very well reflect the actual policies of the network.
Parent post made a claim that this was not an "abuse of power" and I was clarifying how it was indeed an abuse of power.
Apparently the policies are in the process of being redrafted in response to this, so in the future, what Lee did with ##hntop may very well reflect the actual policies of the network.
> Is the expectation that someone could squat (as per the new channel description) a channel for all perpetuity, even if they no longer participate on the platform?
I really think that is the expectation. I can see reasonable exceptions for specific important channels, where someone abandons an active channel that is a valuable community resource and it is transferred to another caretaker who has some sort of mandate from the community. Even that could be seen as a bit sketchy, imo, and there is precedent for just choosing another channel name rather than going against community norms.
In this case, I think it's hard to argue that the channel just had to continue to function and so protocol had to be breached. The raised eyebrows this is getting are justified, imo.
I really think that is the expectation. I can see reasonable exceptions for specific important channels, where someone abandons an active channel that is a valuable community resource and it is transferred to another caretaker who has some sort of mandate from the community. Even that could be seen as a bit sketchy, imo, and there is precedent for just choosing another channel name rather than going against community norms.
In this case, I think it's hard to argue that the channel just had to continue to function and so protocol had to be breached. The raised eyebrows this is getting are justified, imo.
I'm surprised IRC is still a thing with the rise of Matrix, IMHO a modern replacement.
I think IRC is nearing the end of its usefulness, but I am under no illusion over why it's still in use, and I do not believe a "modern replacement" to be automatically better than other options.
Not being replaced by modern replacements is pretty much IRC's thing.
Edit: I guess https://xkcd.com/1782/ makes that point better.
Edit: I guess https://xkcd.com/1782/ makes that point better.
It is impressive how little time it took for the abuses to kick in.
It's a shame abusive operators have taken over Freenode... /s
anonops_2021(3)
what is this 1997 irc drama?
The whole thing is.
honestly don't mind this one, worth it for the fairly awesome meta footnote
1997 IRC drama was resolved on IRC. This drama is mostly being executed through lawyers and legal BS.
> engaging in routine abuses of power
I wonder if people that really suffered from abuse of power will use the same term in this case.
- I spent years in prison because of corrupt judge.
- oh, that's nothing! Once I was using IRC when...
I wonder if people that really suffered from abuse of power will use the same term in this case.
- I spent years in prison because of corrupt judge.
- oh, that's nothing! Once I was using IRC when...
It's probably worth noting when people commit petty abuses of power so you know not to trust them with actual, important power.
That the power is small does not make it not abuse.
The freenode drama reads like tabloid trash gossip and I question the value of it on a sophisticated site like HN.
You underestimate the role that Freenode has in open source software and geek culture.
>sophisticated site like HN
Freenode maintains a policy against spam [1]. This policy hasn’t changed for years.
If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to contact freenode support.
Secondly, you come to conclusions that have no basis from your explanation. To be clear, freenode doesn’t “tap” private messages.
[1] https://freenode.net/policies
If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to contact freenode support.
Secondly, you come to conclusions that have no basis from your explanation. To be clear, freenode doesn’t “tap” private messages.
[1] https://freenode.net/policies
Andrew, the link clearly states you can't just take over channels. Why are you deferring to clearly void "policies"?
How does this address any criticism?
How does this address any criticism?
I'm guessing that he's now going to claim that the policy change he instituted 5 hours ago that allows him to do this[1] has always been there.
[1] https://github.com/freenode/web-7.0/pull/513/commits/2037126...
[1] https://github.com/freenode/web-7.0/pull/513/commits/2037126...
Ah, I was waiting for just that.
Are you implying that you are going to deny every community that envisages to leave your network to advertise to their users that they moved ?
Could you quote the policy against spam?
There's a fair mention of "IRC drama" in these comments and I'll say this: IRC has drama in the same way that HN does. The volume of people that call this place "the orange site" or refer to "HN's culture" while chiding about certain comments is orthogonal to the drama that happens in IRC. The difference is that you don't have dang as a mediator. Freenode (and now Libera) leave much of the operation up to channel owners, even if they want to put in place ridiculous rules. These operators are held to very little, it takes a large margin of abuse for them to be relieved of their channels. There's also a non-insignificant amount of people that believe bans are mostly earned, even if they're for ridiculous rules.
So, while I get this drama looks pathetic, it's the same kind of drama that occurs here that outside observers would like also declare pathetic.