Spam in Open Source Design chat room

Open Source Design meta
1

Any thoughts on all the spam in the chat room starting around https://botbot.me/freenode/opensourcedesign/2018-08-01/ ?

2

It’s plaguing all freenode rooms and I have no clue how admins are dealing with it. Annoying. I also get a lot of PM from spam bots.

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3

Yes, it’s not an Open Source Design room specific think. It’s affecting everyone. And is hard to tackle since there are multiple users (so bans are not a solution), not that many people with IRC rights on the channel (so voice it’s not a solution) and lots of people don’t have their accounts registered (so +r also not a solution).

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4

In the Nextcloud channels, we actually went into “registered users only” (+r) mode to solve this. It’s unfortunate since it makes the rooms less welcoming. :\

Not sure if we should do the same, or wait it out, or if there’s another means to deal with it. Maybe it’s time to simply use the forum more? :slight_smile:

5

+1 with that. Althbough a Forum should be used for asyncy discussion (on the other hand I see a lot of async questions on IRC as well which could perfectly fit for the forum).

On a related note, I think Discourse has a chat plugin (never tried it though)

6

First of all:
A. there is just 1 founder for our #opensourcedesign room.
If you talk with ChanServ and ask “INFO #opensourcedesign” you will have:

Information on #opensourcedesign

  • Founder : garthdb
    Registered : Sep 17 16:32:10 2013 (4y 50w 3d ago)
    Last used : Aug 27 05:33:25 2018 (1w 2d 4h ago)
    Mode lock : +ntc-slk
    Email : [garthdb@*****.com]
    Entrymsg : Hey! Welcome to #OpenSourceDesign - let us know if you need anything.
    Flags : KEEPTOPIC GUARD
    The #opensourcedesign namespace is registered to the opensourcedesign project
    ***** End of Info *****

We should add more founders to the channels. Apparently we could have up to 4.

B. If you ask about “ACCESS #opensourcedesign LIST” you will see:

Entry Nickname/Host Flags*
1 garthdb +AFORefiorstv [modified 4y 48w 1d ago]
2 timothybsmith +AOeiorstv [modified 4y 48w 1d ago]
3 una +AOov [modified 3y 29w 0d ago]
4 JanCBorchardt +Oo [modified 3y 4w 0d ago]
5 bnvk +Oo [modified 3y 4w 0d ago]

End of #opensourcedesign FLAGS listing.

So someone that has operator access on IRC should try to add some rules on IRC in order to prevent the spam.

C. Some commands that might fix the SPAM problem (provided by enygma from #xwiki):

  • Talk to IRC Bridge (@appservice-irc:matrix.org), while being a channel operator:

!cmd MODE # +q $~a

  • Talk to ChanServ (@freenode_ChanServ:matrix.org) while having access on the channel with a registered nickname

flags #opensourcedesign !@gateway/shell/matrix.org/* +V

  • Optional: Channel status/info and current access list:

INFO #
ACCESS # LIST

  • To give someone access to the channel, talk to ChanServ as a Founder or someone with access:

FLAGS # +*

sets channel auto-quiet for any non-registered nicknames and sets auto-voice for matrix users (even with an unregistered nickname), so they can talk and not be affected like IRC users are (i.e. that are forced to use a registered nickname in order to talk)

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