272282 - We need an IRC Usage Policy

Status: NEW

(mozilla.org :: Governance, task)

Description

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

Usage and visibility of irc.mozilla.org has gone WAY up over the last month or
two thanks in no small part to the visibility created by advertising it as a
place to get help with Firefox (this in itself is a good thing).

There are starting to be more and more "questionable" activities taking place on
our IRC network which the IRC Ops have been receiving complaints about, and some
of them are in major gray areas where the lack of a defined policy makes it hard
to justify kicking them off the network or otherwise banning them from channels.

Most of these issues so far relate to the presence of 'bots'.  Because of the
very nature of providing development services, we have a proliferation of bots
already in existence on the network, most of which provide some service to the
channels they reside in that is generally accepted as needed on those channels
(reporting on Bugzilla bug changes, opping people, information lookup, etc). 
New users are often doing the "oh, this server allows bots, I want to run one!"
thing.  So far, policy on this issue has mostly been "at the discression of the
channel operators on the channel in question."

With our increasing usage, it would probably be a very good thing to have a
general "Code of Conduct" for IRC as well.

Examples of Freenode's policies:

http://freenode.net/policy.shtml
http://freenode.net/channel_guidelines.shtml

Comment 1

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

Because of the nature of our network, an important part of this policy would
probably be what types of channels we'll allow.  There is a bit of evidence of
people camping out here for completely non-Mozilla purposes on an out-of-the-way
channel just because it's a (relatively) quiet out-of-the-way place. :)

Comment 2

[Mitchell Baker]

Yup, makes sense.  I'm hoping someone else can take the first crack at what the
policy ought to be.  I'm not the most experienced IRC person in our world and
would be very happy if someone else felt motivated to start this.  I'll take the
responsibiity for makin it official and so on when the time comes if need be.  

Mitchell

Comment 3

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

My personal opinion is that we should have a simple "no new bots without consent
of the IRC owner(s)" rule. That seems like a good first or second rule in the
policy.

Comment 4

[Scott Kveton]

Why run your own IRC servers?  To me, it detracts from what the "main thing" is
and spreads already thinned sysadmin resources out even further.

In the original comment, someone mentioned Freenode policy.  Why not just use
Freenode?  We actually host quite a bit of their infrastructure here mainly
because we wanted to get out of the IRC server business (we used to run our own
at irc.oregonstate.edu but decided it was too much of a pain).  Freenode's
policy and mission fit well with Mozilla and they have the means and staff to
dedicate to things like policing bots and keeping channels on task, etc.

I see a lot of wasted cycles on policing IRC that instead could be used to move
Mozilla forward.

Comment 5

[Deedra Waters]

I agree with Scott here. Freenode has the staff to handle things like all the porn spam bots I've been seeing on irc.mozilla.org lately, as well as dealing with offtopic channels so mozilla doesn't have to handle any of that...

If mozilla would like to move to freenode, I can make this possible, and would be willing to dedicate the time to making it happen.  I'm a member of freenode's staff, and getting the channels that mozilla has/needs won't be that hard for me to do.:)

Comment 6

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

It would be nice to let freenode worry about policing IRC, but on the other
hand, we have a LOT of people using our server that have grown quite attached to
nicknames that are in use by other people on freenode, and I'm pretty sure we
have more than one channel with conflicting names, too.  Is it worth all that
displacement?

Comment 7

[Deedra Waters]

Freenode can give mozilla the channels that it has on irc.mozilla.org, I've already ensured that. All that has to happen there is that someone from the mozilla foundation needs to do is fill out a contact form, and list the channels that they own, or even just generate a list, and email the list to [e-mail], though they would still need to fill out the contact form.

As for nicks, we unfortunately can't take nicks that are already in use, however, I can drop expired nicks  so that people can register them, and I'm willing to do that. 

Comment 8

[Deedra Waters]

There's something else to think about: freenode doesn't have any downtime, meaning that it's always up and running, where as in the case of mozilla running it's own server, if the colo disappears off the network, so does irc.mozilla.org which leaves users unable to get help till the colo returns.

Also: I see a lot of people asking to be opped in channels, because their bots aren't working. Freenode has services like nickserv and chanserv to handle stuff like that, all people have to do is register the channels, and they're set. Or in this case, the contact for the mozilla foundation would register the channel, and either retain admin access for those channels, or give people access to handle the channels.

Sure, mozilla could run it's own irc services, but this means more work for the mozilla sysadmin staff, and as kveton pointed out, they're spread thin enough already with out doing irc related stuff.

Comment 9

[Stuart Parmenter]

(In reply to comment #8)
> There's something else to think about: freenode doesn't have any downtime,
The network as a whole? No, but single servers certainly do go down.  You won't
end up with everyone falling off.  We've had numerous offers in the past for
people wanting to add servers here and maybe now is the time to do so, even
though we only have on average 500 people logged in.

We expect to be making a few changes in the next few weeks including adding SSL
support, at least one additional server outside the mozilla.org colo, a new
usage policy, and adding some sort of channel services. 

Thanks for your offer, but we don't believe that the move would be the best
thing to do at this time.

Comment 10

[Mitchell Baker]

Pav

are you speaking for yourself, or has there been some decision?

mitchell

Comment 11

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

(In reply to comment #10)
> are you speaking for yourself, or has there been some decision?

A few of us sysadmins discussed it on IRC and came to the conclusion that Stuart
stated here.  If staff decides we're better off allocating resources elsewhere,
we'll deal, but at the moment, we feel we have sufficient capability (and
volunteers) to deal with the situation right now.

Anyhow, this bug was about setting up a policy for our IRC usage, which will
probably be needed short-term regardless if we move or not.  Discussion of
whether we move to Freenode or not is probably best discussed in a separate bug.
 kveton and dmwaters were CCed on this bug because they had expertise in
admining IRC servers, not in order to start an argument over moving to Freenode
or not.

Comment 12

[Scott Kveton]

> kveton and dmwaters were CCed on this bug because they had expertise in
>admining IRC servers, not in order to start an argument over moving to Freenode
>or not.

We did not mean to cause a ruckus at all.  You asked our opinion on policy for
an IRC network and both Deedra and I agree that re-inventing the wheel is quite
silly.  We chimed in to that effect and will now graciously bow out of the
discussion.

Comment 13

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

(In reply to comment #12)
> re-inventing the wheel is quite silly.

Yes, but this is a rather small wheel, and requires a fairly big wheel to be
completely changed to avoid reinventing the small one.

I do appreciate the input, and it *was* a very nice offer.  We're just not ready
for that yet.

Comment 14

[Reed Loden [:reed]]

--> Governance

Comment 15

[Reed Loden [:reed]]

zak: Please only change the assignee and not the QAContact when you are taking a bug. Many of us watch the QAContact for changes with Governance bugs, and by changing it, it causes bugmail to be lost and never seen. Thanks!

Comment 16

[Zak Greant]

Assigning to JustDave.

Dave: If you would like a policy, draft one for review and post to the governance list for review.

Comment 17

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

I think Majken or Sam would be better qualified to draft such a thing nowadays.

Comment 18

[Samuel Sidler (old account; do not CC)]

I can take this. I haven't talked to Majken yet, but I'm sure she'd be up for working on this as well. I'll connect with her and we'll come up with something.

Comment 19

[Majken Connor [:Kensie]]

Yes, this will be a challenge, but one I'm totally into.

Comment 20

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

Do we still need this, or do we seem to be coping OK without it?

Gerv

Comment 21

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

I think we still need this. In particular, off-topic channels are starting to pop up more than they used to, and efforts to discourage non-Mozilla-related use of the network would benefit from a clear usage policy. Right now we pretty much have to fall back on the brief "this server is for the Mozilla community" paragraph in the /motd when someone asks what our policy is. Something along the lines of the freenode on-topic/off-topic policies would be useful in those situations: http://freenode.net/policy.shtml#ontopic .