3 ms·

The post says the new system will enforce authentication, and hints at dealing with bots and spam accounts. But it’s not going to be easy without inconveniencin

The post says the new system will enforce authentication, and hints at dealing with bots and spam accounts. But it’s not going to be easy without inconveniencing users to some extent (or a greater extent than now).

Dylan16807 8y ago
IRC could enforce authentication without much effort. You could use email registration, etc. Maybe there's some black magic in other services to do better anti-bot/spam than that?
- stormbrew 8y ago
  Generally speaking, systems that add registration onto irc tend to make it even harder to use than it already is. In order to make it better you basically have to make it at best act strangely with existing clients, or at worst make it completely incompatible with them.
  - 0db532a0 8y ago
    You sound like you have absolutely no idea. You are greeted by NickServ on connecting with an unregistered nick, asking you to register with your email by sending a standard /msg. You open the email and click the link. I remember doing this for FreeNode at the age of 13. It’s fine.
    - michaelt 8y ago
      Then you close your laptop and reopen it and you have to reconnect. Oh, you want it to automatically reconnect? No problem, you can automate identifying yourself to NickServ with a simple command like /NETWORK ADD -autosendcmd "/^msg nickserv ident pass;wait 2000" ExampleNet Oh, a ghost session stopped you connecting as YourName and now you're YourName2 ? No problem, NickServ can kill your ghost session so you can get your registered nick back. Oh, you want to do that automatically? No problem, just download this script - a mere 10 lines of perl - and put it into your irssi autorun directory. Easy, as you say. Anyone who disagrees has absolutely no idea :)
      - 0db532a0 8y ago
        Bullshit objections. I cannot remember the last time I had a ghost session that I needed to have killed. NickServ password integration comes by default even in Emacs’s ERC.
      - kuschku 8y ago
        What’s so complicated about this again? https://i.k8r.eu/Jr-NBg.png https://i.k8r.eu/Jr-NBg.png
    - stormbrew 8y ago
      I've been on irc of various flavors for 25 years now. I've seen every problem nickserv system can manifest and I've seen it cause a lot of problems for users less technical than me. It's nice that you've never had a problem with it. Doesn't mean it's easy or perfect or that no one does.
- est31 8y ago
  The typical ways to combat spam are also the ones most toxic for privacy and anonymity. On discord, the chat service that Rust migrates from IRC, I had to enter captchas quite often in order to log in to my existing account. Simply because I cleared all my cookies and had a different IP address. I rather have the little amounts of IRC spam than having to give them my phone number (EDIT: I've heard from someone who logged in to discord using a VPN who now has to enter one even on logins outside of VPNs). Abandoning IRC seems to be against Mozilla values.

Dylan16807 8y ago

IRC could enforce authentication without much effort. You could use email registration, etc. Maybe there's some black magic in other services to do better anti-bot/spam than that?

stormbrew 8y ago
Generally speaking, systems that add registration onto irc tend to make it even harder to use than it already is. In order to make it better you basically have to make it at best act strangely with existing clients, or at worst make it completely incompatible with them.
- 0db532a0 8y ago
  You sound like you have absolutely no idea. You are greeted by NickServ on connecting with an unregistered nick, asking you to register with your email by sending a standard /msg. You open the email and click the link. I remember doing this for FreeNode at the age of 13. It’s fine.
  - michaelt 8y ago
    Then you close your laptop and reopen it and you have to reconnect. Oh, you want it to automatically reconnect? No problem, you can automate identifying yourself to NickServ with a simple command like /NETWORK ADD -autosendcmd "/^msg nickserv ident pass;wait 2000" ExampleNet Oh, a ghost session stopped you connecting as YourName and now you're YourName2 ? No problem, NickServ can kill your ghost session so you can get your registered nick back. Oh, you want to do that automatically? No problem, just download this script - a mere 10 lines of perl - and put it into your irssi autorun directory. Easy, as you say. Anyone who disagrees has absolutely no idea :)
    - 0db532a0 8y ago
      Bullshit objections. I cannot remember the last time I had a ghost session that I needed to have killed. NickServ password integration comes by default even in Emacs’s ERC.
    - kuschku 8y ago
      What’s so complicated about this again? https://i.k8r.eu/Jr-NBg.png https://i.k8r.eu/Jr-NBg.png
  - stormbrew 8y ago
    I've been on irc of various flavors for 25 years now. I've seen every problem nickserv system can manifest and I've seen it cause a lot of problems for users less technical than me. It's nice that you've never had a problem with it. Doesn't mean it's easy or perfect or that no one does.
est31 8y ago
The typical ways to combat spam are also the ones most toxic for privacy and anonymity. On discord, the chat service that Rust migrates from IRC, I had to enter captchas quite often in order to log in to my existing account. Simply because I cleared all my cookies and had a different IP address. I rather have the little amounts of IRC spam than having to give them my phone number (EDIT: I've heard from someone who logged in to discord using a VPN who now has to enter one even on logins outside of VPNs). Abandoning IRC seems to be against Mozilla values.