[wp-docs] IRC users list

[Michael Renzmann]

Hi.

Scott Merrill wrote:
> Since the bots all allow other people to adjust your definition, I don't
> think this is a very reliable option.  Also, what happens when a bot is
> offline?

Good points.

> I think there's independent value in having a WordPress group on
> Freenode, if for no other reason than to secure the #wordpress-*
> channels.  But I don't think that hostname cloaks will provide much
> reassurance to the average user looking for help.  Sure, some folks will
> understand the signifigance, but not many.

There is already a Wiki page about the IRC channels, iirc. Why not
adding the necessary information to interpret this information to it, or
to some FAQ?

> Moreover, what criteria will be used to determine who gets a cloak, and
> who doesn't?

>From the point of view of Freenode: that's totally left to the group.
The group contact files a cloak request per user for the Freenode staff
and they will create/modify/delete this cloak ASAP. Apart from the need
that the "last element" of the cloak needs to be the name of the
group/project (here: maybe wordpress) and the same for each of the
group's cloaks, the rest doesn't matter. If the contact asks for
creation of the cloak "i.am.damn.cool.cuz.i.love.wordpress" this would
be technically ok.

>From the point of view of the group it may make sense to follow the
hierachical model of DNS. The more right an element of the cloak is, the
more "general" this element is. Elements on the right group together all
the elements left from it.

Think of WordPress in an hierarchical way and you might come up with
something like:

WordPress
  +-- Development
        +-- Core
        +-- Plugins
        +-- ...
  +-- Documentation
        +-- Wiki
        +-- FAQ
        +-- ...
  +-- i18n
        +-- Europe
              +-- Germany
              +-- Italy
              +-- ...
        +-- Asia
        +-- ...
  +-- Support
        +-- Forums
        +-- IRC
        +-- Mailinglists
        +-- ...

and so on. Someone working in the german i18n team then may have a cloak
like: user.germany.europe.i18n.wordpress

Of course, this is bloated, and the real organizational scheme most
probably would differ, so take this just as an example. It's left to the
project, and many projects choosed to have not too complicated cloaks.
The more differentiated the cloak name scheme is, the more complicated
it will be to find which cloak a person might get - many people help in
different "oranizational units", so which one to pick for the cloak? You
get the idea.


It might be interesting for such a decision to get an idea on the cloak
scheme used by other projects. This is relatively simple.
http://freenode.net/primary_groups.shtml has a list of all primary
groups, with their primary channel name in the first column. This name
normally is used for the cloak as well. You can use the /who command to
see what users of each of these projects are currently online under
which of the project's cloaks.

Example:
You want to find out about the phpBB project. Locate the project in the
primary group list. You'll see that their main channel is "#phpbb"
(noted without # in the list), hence the project cloak most probably
ends with "phpbb" as well. Now change to your IRC client and type "/who
*.phpbb", which just gave me:
=== cut ===
--- #phpBB Chaz Caedmon.moderator.phpbb irc.freenode.net Caedmon H@ :0 Chaz
--- #freenode ~graham GrahamJE.moderator.phpbb irc.freenode.net
GrahamJE|Away H+ :0 GrahamJE
--- #phpBBmod smithy_dll smithy-dll.modifications.phpbb irc.freenode.net
smithy_dll H@ :0 David
--- #phpbbstyles ~NeoThermi NeoThermic-student-pdpc.support.phpbb
irc.freenode.net NeoThermic H :0 NeoThermic
--- #wordpress SHS SHS.moderator.phpbb irc.freenode.net SHS` H :0 SHS`
--- #phpBB ~adam AdamR.support.phpbb irc.freenode.net AdamR|Away H@ :0
Adam Reyher
--- *.phpbb :End of /WHO list.
=== cut ===
The second column of this "space-seperated list" contains the username,
the third column the hostname (= the cloaks). As you can see, the phpbb
group decided to use at least: <user>.moderator.phpbb,
<user>.modifications.phpbb and <user>.support.phpbb. There might be
other "sub-groups", but no user that might belong to such groups is
currently online.

hth.

Bye, Mike