[wp-hackers] IRC Problems

[Matt Mullenweg]

Anthony Cole wrote:
> Just this morning, we had a lively bunch of about five from the GNAA 
> (troll group, google it) come in and just start DCC'ing everyone with an 
> exploit, and it took me forever to get ahold of someone who could help. 

This is the perfect example of something that cannot be handled by a 
channel op effectively. Serious trolls, people with botnets, etc need to 
be handled on the Freenode level otherwise it's like irritating a wasp 
with a piece of paper.

> I know this has been beaten to death time and time before, but something 
> needs to be done about this once and for all. The wordpress irc channel 
> is a trivial part of the wordpress community.

On the social side, however, I agree. io_error seems like a good 
candidate for an op on the channel, I'm open to other suggestions. 3 
regulars seems like a good number.

I think people who are ops should only "op themselves" when needed to 
not create a hierarchy in the channel, which is the core of what has 
been characterized as my no-op bias.

There are several other people who have ops on the channel, they're just 
not regulars anymore, hence the need for new folks.

Also to clarify my "no #wordpress support" position, it was generally 
decided a while back that sending IRC-newbies into #wordpress with the 
expectation that they would get questions answered immediately is a bad 
idea. We positioned it like that for a bit, but it just annoyed people 
who were there to chat and disappointed people looking for support.

Furthermore, the forums seemed like an infinitely better support medium 
since they're threaded, archived, searchable. People familiar with IRC 
etiquette can and do help other folks on WP issues on the channel, but I 
think anyone who regularly hangs out there understands it tends to be 
more of a social place than a technical one. (Support could be partially 
addressed by creating a new channel, like #wordpress-support.)

-- 
Matt Mullenweg
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