Hey Hubski,
Been a bit aloof of late, but still living the life on irc.
A few of us were chatting on the irc channel today (#hubski @ irc.mountai.net) and one user brought up the fact that no one has operator status on / ownership of the channel. Additionally, they noted that mountai is a somewhat obscure network (it appears to be by and large for a random Minecraft server) and that mountai has been buggy for large group discussions in the past (not allowing people to connect after a certain number).
Unfortunately getting ops on the channel would require everyone leaving, which is near impossible with the current number of idlers. I and others suggested irc.freenode.net as a replacement, as it is a popular server with decent channel / nick services, is committed to open source software (which Hubski may soon be, eh eh?), and is usually co-localized with irc users already connected to other software projects' channels.
I registered ##hubski @ irc.freenode.net, but unfortunately #hubski (which is recommended for official channels) is currently being squatted by an old user who did not wish to give up the channel and +m'd (forced silenced) the channel after we contacted them about it.
If you all want, I can pursue this with network's staff and see about re-registering it under a hubski admin or volunteer's control. So the question now is: Should I pursue this with the staff? Would the admins rather not have an official irc channel? Would you all rather move to a different network?
I like freenode and I'm of the opinion that ##hubski is annoying to remember and could look like a typo to the uninitiated. But I don't want to proceed further without community input.
thundara I dropped the channel the next morning, and actually PM'd you on reddit, but just now noticed you last posted there 5 or 6 years ago, so didn't figure you'd check to see my reply after our IRC chat. You'd caught me just as I was getting home from the Shittiest Day of a Shit Week at work, and I was even more irritated to come home to not one person, but three people PM'ing me asking for control of a channel I'd completely forgotten I had. I was made even more irritated when one of them (not you) kept PM'ing me with comments such as "petty" and "spite" and other BS over and over again until I put them on my ignore list - I don't believe I ever responded to them, they just kept up with that. Those things made me pissy and not cooperative. But I don't actually care about the channel. Pro-tip to anyone else reading who may need to have a discussion to accomplish a goal: insulting the person you're trying to get something from isn't the best way to go about it. Once again, that wasn't (really) you thundara, but the other person who kept PM'ing me. edit: accidentally posted twice because I just got home from a 12 hour overnight and am tired.
Hey, just noticed the message on there. Thank you for dropping the channel, I apologize for getting a bit pissy as well when I was talking to you the other day. I don't condone repeated harassment, but I did also insult you as well and I regret doing so. Separately, if you want to talk out your issues with this website, you are always welcome to do so. I can't guarantee that you won't face further interpersonal conflict, but the admins here are always looking for constructive suggestions to improve the community experience. To others reading this post, there's one other user idling in #hubski right now, but once they leave, I'll re-register than channel and make a new post on here about it.
I appreciate it, but doubt that I do - I don't imagine it'd be very much appreciated by anyone given the way I left and the angry comments that thread held. I seem to recall the issue being discussed more than once, and the admins never looked to give any ground, so I'm not that interested. I just re-registered to let you know the room was dropped, and will probably forget about it now.Separately, if you want to talk out your issues with this website, you are always welcome to do so. I can't guarantee that you won't face further interpersonal conflict, but the admins here are always looking for constructive suggestions to improve the community experience.
I think we should definitely pursue getting #hubski from the freenode staff. It shouldn't be hard as long as an admin does it, and official IRCs are great places for communities to hang out.
I agree with you, TroubledClef. It shouldn't be too hard at all for someone from hubski to obtain the #hubski channel. Freenode from what I have seen when I used it is stable and very well ran. They have policies in place from years of doing the IRC thing and are actually meant for communities like hubski.
Many good points, thundara. As a long-time IRC'er with multiple servers and channels connected 24/7, I do think it's time to make a more official channel for Hubski, even if it's not run on our own hardware. I'd also agree that #hubski would be better than ##hubski on freenode (my first recommendation for an existing network), but I suspect the freenode staff won't hand it over so quickly without some sort of verification from a site admin/owner.
freenode is by far the biggest network and ideal for a community like this. Other networks like EFnet or synIRC would also be a viable option, but I think unless we have a real reason to move there I'd say go with freenode. Let's just hope we can get the #hubski channel name sorted out and redirect ##hubski to it.
mk, forwardslash we may be able to get #hubski on freenode by appealing to the Freenode staff. I've been talking with thundara and it comes down to this: since Freenode is technically aimed at FOSS projects, the appeal may be helped by either a) making the site itself open source -or-
b) leveraging hubski support of arc / being built on the same codebase as hackernews
I would also be happy to help with this in any way I can.
Hello. mountai is a server run (mostly in absentia) by a friend of mine. It occasionally goes down and is brought back up as quickly as one of us can reach out to him. This does mess up the chanserv info sometimes. It's certainly not an ideal solution, because it definitely could go down for good someday. However, the question about problems after a certain number of users joining is just user error or client-side trouble. mountai used to host 80-100 connections at once regularly without any issues. [EDIT: maybe more, shit, I had forgotten all about that minecraft group. Now I can't even remember how we know them.] Now it sits at about half that, I think. There is next to no way the problems people have experienced are, bluntly, not their own fault. (Don't use mibbit!) Nothing wrong with switching to freenode though, it's what everyone else uses.
Yeah, I've never had an issue with my client, though others have reported some. I also suspect it's a mibbit issue. Another option is if your friend can reset the channel and give someone operator status, then we can register it with ChanServ and regain control. I'd personally still prefer moving to freenode, unless your friend is planning to manage mountai for years to come.
Hey thundara, good to see you and thanks for the post. We have discussed hosting our own IRC internally. It's not #1 on the list of things to get done though, so perhaps in the interim we should find a solution. I'm not on IRC as much these days and I personally don't know a lot about these things, insomniasexx, mk, forwardslash, any thoughts on how they ought to proceed? thundara, I trust your judgement on this. Hope all is well in Beantown.
I'm in agreement with flagamuffin that it's probably easier to use an existing irc server than to set up a new one. Then you only have to concern yourself with running the channel. And that's just a matter of having the ability to change the topic message and kick / ban users posting inappropriate content. A more involved question might be deciding a channel policy (no spam, no personal information, etc), but that's not too urgent considering how well behaved people have been on there (Minus lambda!).
lambda is one crazy mo-fo. Thundara, can you set this up? We can discuss any "policy" stuff after the fact.
I realise it may be a little difficult getting #hubski on Freenode, and noticed you mentioning that mountai.net only has one server in operation? I'm more than happy to volunteer my network - there's a few of us that run a network of 3 servers, in 3 different countries, and they're constantly monitored, etc, so we jump on any issues quite quickly. There's rarely any downtime, we have working services in place, etc. It may get no attention at all, and that's totally fine, but I just wanted to volunteer a server as available, which isn't for some random minecraft network - its only purpose is to be an open IRC network :) I've pre-registered the channel just in case, and am more than happy to hand it over to current operators. Anyone, if people are interested, #hubski on irc.d0xed.com (for SSL, port 6697, or 11111). You can also check out http://d0xed.com/#!started.md for a basic guide on getting on to IRC, if you've not used it before.
I'm not very familiar with the inner workings of IRC so I would rather leave it to someone who is. I have no preference in different servers or anything like that due to that lack of knowledge. If anyone is familiar with setting up an IRC and would be willing to guide, set it up, give insight on setting one up one on Hubski.com, DM us and we can discuss further. Again, I have no idea what it takes. As TNG said, we've discussed having our own IRC but it hadn't made the high priority list nor are any of us familiar with setting it up.
I just commented elsewhere in the thread, but guys, there's really no reason to waste your limited time and brainpower on setting up a private IRC network when there are a ton of free well-known alternatives. Maybe someday. thenewgreen