I’m not immersed in IRC culture but I used to hang out on Freenode a bit, and I think it’s quite obvious that top-down dictatorial decisions like the recent “hi

I’m not immersed in IRC culture but I used to hang out on Freenode a bit, and I think it’s quite obvious that top-down dictatorial decisions like the recent “hijacking” of channels for mentioning Libera (or whatever actually happened there) are toxic to community building. To the people actually doing the community building, choosing Freenode now looks a bit like founding a city in the shadow of an active volcano, with a capricious force immune to accountability who can (and demonstrably will) nuke your decades-old community structures without any meaningful warning. FOSS is rife with stupid drama and I don’t think either “side” here is an exception, but the recent “purge” goes above and beyond. I would absolutely never consider trying to start a community there now, for entirely pragmatic reasons.