Is IRC, Isn't freenode.

9th August, 2005     IRC, Life, Rants,

freenode, an IRC network by any other name (no, I will not call it a "Discussion network").

I hang out on freenode, to talk with some friends that I have made over the years, and also to get help and assist with some open source projects, namely Ubuntu and irssi, when I can.

However, I am most likely classified by Rob Levin, as one of the people he calls a 'Traditional IRC User'. What is a Traditional IRC User? Well you can read his thoughts on them on this wiki page. Do that before reading on. It should be noted that Rob Levin has not always been popular with everybody.

OK. Now that you have read the wiki page (and the quotes which are considerably biased to what a Traditional IRC User would call an 'idiot'), you might understand some of my disagreements with the stance.

The reason I have mentioned Traditional IRC Users, is because the following is going to detail annoyances that Traditional IRC Users and myself are going to have with freenode in a very short period of time.

NOIDPREFIX

Many IRC networks use nickname registration services. I don't have a problem with nickname registration services as they have their benefits and disadvantages. However, freenode will soon be implementing a policy, which will mean that people will not only be able to register a nick they want, but by doing so, all variants of it are automatically registered to them. This means if you register the nickname 'foo', you also have the exclusive right to own nicknames with 'foo' in them. For example, and not limited to.

foo foo_ foo` foo foo-1 [foo] foo|ATHOME foo[WORK]

People can say "this will help, because I then i don't have to register each of those nicknames", but their is a major problem with this.

Say you wanted the nickname 'Foo_Fighter', well, you could not have it, because someone, in this case, already owns the nickname 'foo'. Why? Well because 'foo' is registered to someone, and 'Foo_Fighter' is a variant of 'foo'. Sure, he could use 'FooFighter', but that may already be taken.

A more problematic example, is one expressed by The_Tick (I think you can see already what his problem is going to be).

The_Tick also makes a good point about nick changes being used to indicate if you are away or not. Something again, that Traditional IRC Users have complained about before.

I know a number of people who are going to have similar problems, and would prefer to use the nicknames they already have for years, then having to pick another one. It would be easier in these cases for us to use elsewhere, simply because no other network has problems of such a scale, other than freenode.

I could add more to this, but i suggest instead that you complain to policy@freenode.net, especially if you use the network, to complain about these changes.

You can see the full policy draft on the freenode site.