Freenode, the WMF's favorite IRC system, is sold off

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ericbarbour
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Freenode, the WMF's favorite IRC system, is sold off

Post by ericbarbour » Fri May 21, 2021 7:22 am

And apparently the staff of Freenode is quitting in "droves". Remember: this was the IRC server set up by the thoroughly dishonest sysop Rob "lilo" Levin, who died under mysterious circumstances in 2006 after it was revealed he was begging money from his users, and using it to fund his own lifestyle, instead of actually running the server.

Its history was not very nice--especially when Wikipedia admins started using it to plot their dirty little tricks. They now have bots and "permanently cloaked users/channels" running on Freenode, for "seekret operations". If it really was taken over by a "right-wing Korean businessman" with an agenda, the WMF may be forced to find other accommodation. I suspect either they will set up their own IRC server or migrate to a more modern web-based chat system like Slack, Matrix or Discord. (They already have an "unoffical" Discord server. None of this shit is "official", despite it being used every day for official business.) Some of the Freenode staffers have already set up irc.libera.chat as their new "home" for discussion of open-source software. There are plenty of other IRC systems to choose from--despite endless complaints about IRC being "archaic" and "outdated" and such.

I also suspect that some of the listed former Freenode sysops are longtime Wikipedia editors. Linux and Wikipedia grew up together and many coding nerds from the Linux world have also edited WP. This is a major fuck-up and I fully expect to see years of haranging and warfare over it.

https://blog.bofh.it/debian/id_461

You can see the beginnings of lengthy handwringing by insiders here. Pathetic assholes. Note that a "unilateral decision" appears to have been made to move to libera.chat, and it is already being fought by some admins.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimed ... node_(IRC)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... ght_notice

I guess this should be "documented"; as if anyone gave a shit.....

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Re: Freenode, the WMF's favorite IRC system, is sold off

Post by sashi » Sat May 22, 2021 5:59 pm

I thought I would ask why IRC was so important in the building of a knowledge source. Perhaps in time some brave soul will answer the question.

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Re: Freenode, the WMF's favorite IRC system, is sold off

Post by ericbarbour » Sat May 22, 2021 11:57 pm

sashi wrote:
Sat May 22, 2021 5:59 pm
I thought I would ask why IRC was so important
Oh, come on. You know damn well they will never give you a "coherent" explanation for their love of IRC.

It was an early internet "feature" with peak popularity at the same time Wikipedia started. On IRC a hapless nerd could control a channel by gaining sysop rights. Giving him (very few IRC users were ever female and this is still true today) the power to silence and ban opponents. IRC predated any web live-chat system. Most of all it was popular with IT professionals, hackers and trolls. THAT is adequate explanation for its continued popularity with Wikipedia admins. IRC has declined in popularity because there are much better chat systems available. That even allow the posting of images! ooohhh unthinkable!

Does anyone remember what happened when I, Stierlitz, and a few other Wikipediocracy participants started a #wikipediocracy channel on Freenode in 2014? Just done as a gag. No one expected it to be used seriously. Epic little shit Snowolf took over the channel and banned everyone. Because he's a high-ranking Freenode sysop. There was a lengthy thread about Wiki IRC abuses in 2013. I recall there was also a thread about the #wpo channel but it has "mysteriously disappeared". Hex was basically right; IRC was well on its way out as a public chat area by 2013. (Now, PRIVATE channel discussion, that's something you will NEVER see on a public forum. The dorks were embarrassed by wikipedialogs.com and other IRC capture posts so they "cracked down".)

Kumioko "rediscovered" that channel in 2016, and nobody on WPO bothered to tell him it was empty because Snowolf purged it.

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Re: Freenode, the WMF's favorite IRC system, is sold off

Post by ericbarbour » Sun May 23, 2021 12:04 am

Much funnier was the Lussetti brothers' pathetic attempts to practice "domain name squatting". Ask me about THAT sometime.

There's a Wikipediocracy thread about the Freenode collapse, but it's not as "useful" as this one. Includes childish namecalling.

http://wikipediocracy.com/forum/viewtop ... =8&t=11962

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Re: Freenode, the WMF's favorite IRC system, is sold off

Post by ericbarbour » Sun May 23, 2021 12:29 am

ps: just connected to libera.chat, and this is on the top page:
There are 29 users and 13300 invisible on 17 servers
* 34 :IRC Operators online
* 4 :unknown connection(s)
* 12248 :channels formed
* I have 268 clients and 1 servers
* 268 268 :Current local users 268, max 268
* 13329 13499 :Current global users 13329, max 13499
* Highest connection count: 269 (268 clients) (937 connections received)
12,000-plus channels, on a system that is 3 days old. And most of the 13,000-plus users are "cloaked".
And people wonder why IRC isn't as popular as it used to be. Basement denizens only.

(no, I did not see any public Wikipedia or WMF related channels in the master list. You can bet serious money any WP channels created on there will be invisible and undeclared, "by invitation only".)

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Re: Freenode, the WMF's favorite IRC system, is sold off

Post by ericbarbour » Tue May 25, 2021 1:12 am

Ars Technical writeup is much more useful than any shit posted on WPO

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05 ... -of-korea/
Freenode has been the world's largest IRC network since 2013, with roughly three times as many users as its closest competitor, IRCnet.
Which is not saying much. According to Wikipedia's own article, IRC use peaked at 10 million connections in 2003. Now it's maybe 300,000. Almost as "dead" and "obsolete" as Usenet. Nerds only! "Aging" nerds!

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Re: Freenode, the WMF's favorite IRC system, is sold off

Post by Kumioko » Tue May 25, 2021 10:30 pm

All of the public and nonpublic wikimedia channels have been ported over and the lists of who to block was added and working as of yesterday.

You can be sure they'll start showing in the public lists in the next few days as they get the bugs worked out.
#BbbGate

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Re: Freenode, the WMF's favorite IRC system, is sold off

Post by ericbarbour » Wed May 26, 2021 2:32 am

checked again, now there are seven #mediawiki channels and #countervandalism. A whole slew of en-WP admins and WMF types are in #wikimedia at all times.

And as usual, Snowolf is logged into all of them constantly. "Self-exploiting labor". The fool.

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Re: Freenode, the WMF's favorite IRC system, is sold off

Post by Cruizir2021 » Wed May 26, 2021 10:40 pm

Irc is really old and everyone uses discord now. IRC replaced by ventrilo in the mid 2000s, then skype around 2010, replaced by discord in 2016.

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Re: Freenode, the WMF's favorite IRC system, is sold off

Post by ericbarbour » Tue Jun 01, 2021 1:38 am

"Projects and channels that have decided to leave Freenode"

Includes a who's who of commercial software, Linux, BSD and other open-source projects. Virtually all of them.

That's the end of the party for Freenode. 27 years of craziness / idiocy ends with a loud splat. Kelly Martin said:
Freenode hasn't been the same since Rob Levin died. This is just the final nail in the coffin.
Yet it continued to be used every day by tens of thousands of people for 15 years....

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