April Fools Day Jokes gone totally wrong, and caught on logs.

So [HTML_REMOVED]April Fools Day[HTML_REMOVED], has been and gone again, and a number of people are left standing there, looking like fools, either because they got suckered into another Joke, or their joke was so not funny, that it made them look bad.

Case in point: Rob Levin's "freenode is shutting down" 'joke', or as it should really be known, act of stupidity.

At 22:00 GMT, lilo (Rob Levin's nick on freenode), decided to send the following notice to every client on the freenode network (that's about 25,000 clients atleast)

[HTML_REMOVED]

Well the events that unfolded from there, include 200 or so freenode users, joining the [HTML_REMOVED]OFTC IRC Network[HTML_REMOVED], to carry out Rob Levin's 'prank'. While, this was not the 25,000 users that Rob had obviously been looking for (he did say that everyone should go and do it), the people that did join, did disrupt OFTC's network and #oftc channel for atleast 30 minutes (even tho if you asked Rob, it was only 5-10 minutes). And by disrupt, we mean that people connecting, were having difficulties, and there was also server lag, due to the great number of connects and data being sent at once.

OFTC people were not impressed and who can blame them.

You can see a log of the events [HTML_REMOVED]here[HTML_REMOVED] and screenshots of someone's IRC Client during the event on the following links: [HTML_REMOVED][1][HTML_REMOVED] [HTML_REMOVED][2][HTML_REMOVED] [HTML_REMOVED][3][HTML_REMOVED] [HTML_REMOVED][4][HTML_REMOVED] [HTML_REMOVED][5][HTML_REMOVED] [HTML_REMOVED][6][HTML_REMOVED]

To me, these actions are similar to a [HTML_REMOVED]Denial of Service attack[HTML_REMOVED]. Or more so, a botnet controller, telling the bots in his botnet to go and connect to an IRC Network and flood a channel. (in this case it was a global notice, telling the not-as-smart to go and annoy people in a channel and flood - the evidence is in the logs.)

Now for a little bit of a log clipping: [HTML_REMOVED][HTML_REMOVED]praetorian[HTML_REMOVED] oh, so you have no problem to next year or so, having people do the same to here? :-) [HTML_REMOVED]lilo[HTML_REMOVED] praetorian: now that you've told me, it would hardly be a prank [HTML_REMOVED]lilo[HTML_REMOVED] praetorian: sort of sounds a little angry[HTML_REMOVED]

From this litttle clipping, you can obviously see from this, that asking if freenode minds having such a 'joke' next year, played on it, is not being nice and asking first, it seems that doing so is instead telling freenode that you plan on disrupting it's service. Come again?

The other point to note is, that Rob Levin, as President of the PDPC, and thus head of freenode staff, would know that OFTC exists, and is a rival network to what freenode tries to obtain (an open-source dedicated 'discussion' network). Thus this 'prank' can easily been seen as a way of causing problems for OFTC, under the guise of it being an April Fools Day joke. While Rob says it had nothing to do with the fact that OFTC is the rival, the question still remains, because no one will really ever know Rob Levin's reasons behind the 'prank'.

[HTML_REMOVED]Edit:[HTML_REMOVED] the IRC log snippet i pasted got eaten by the HTML tag monsters.

Published: 2 April 2006 # — Tags: freenode, irc

Is IRC, Isn't freenode.

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_ foofoo` 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[HTML_REMOVED].

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.

Published: 9 August 2005 # — Tags: freenode, irc