Re: [Unity-irc3] Realistic review of drafts; revival of list

[Jan Krueger]

Hi again.

> however, if the user on uk.undernet.org didn't like the politics of
> undernet or were banned from the UK undernet server they could move to
> uk.quakenet.org and still be on the same channel yeah? That way each network
> would have their own politics and rules about users etc.. but channels would
> be on a non-politically controlled server? ...... If this is the case then
> the channel servers would either have to have no controllers (operators)
> which would mean anarchy OR decisions would have to be made by a kinda
> committee so that political/religious views don't taint decisions. (I hate
> politics!)
Precisely. Committee sounds good. However, in the end it's up to the people
who run a channel server. If they want dictatorship, they get it.
I'm trusting in the users here... since they can choose where to create their
channel, I hope they'll just abandon badly-managed and corrupt channel
servers, leaving them empty. Instant feedback style.


> As to intra-network bans....I'd say that they would be a very very bad idea.
> People would be stepping on other peoples toes and I can see major fights
> breaking out!
Since we only have one network, there is no 'intra network ban'. Here's
another idea: a bunch of client servers gather together and setup a blacklist
that's valid for all of the servers involved. They could then decide how to
handle this all.
Anyway, they commit their blacklist entries to a central server. That server
receives incoming entries and stores them, remembering which blacklist
committee set it. Servers in a BL (blacklist) committee will periodically
fetch the list to use it locally; they will only get their own entries though.
We could also make the central blacklist server place superglobal bans if
someone is blacklisted on a bunch of BL committees (if someone is banned from
several groups of server, that's a pretty obvious sign for that they're really
malicious, it could be a political issue otherwise).
Last but not least, a superglobal BL committee could place global bans, but I
guess that'll cause lots of fights, so let's not do this.


> This point really needs to be thrashed out alot...maybe once we have a
> protocol standard kinda sorted out it might be an idea to approach some of
> the current client coders to see if A) they would be willing to change their
> codebase and B) if it would be possible for them to support multiple
> protocols easily.
We can write our own client for a start, we could write client-sided proxies
for compatibility with old clients, and we can provide server-sided proxies,
which is absolutely desirable. People could keep using their old clients
without missing a single feature.
A customized client wouldn't be bad, of course. Next time I meet Khaled, I'll
ask him. ;o)


> Saying that a channel is local because it resides on a single server isn't
> what I'd class as a local channel... local to me would be like the old irc2
> local channels, you join it and it only exists on THAT server...so if
> general users could run up their own channel server then you could have
> #my_private_channel on my.private.channel.server.net but that would need
> users to have either a reverse lookup (which not everyone will/can have) or
> connect via IP.
True true. I don't think a reverse lookup is necessary however; a forward one
is enough for people to find the channel server.

> on a side note, how does "/join address@hidden" grab
> anyone as a way to join channels? and yes if you wanted you could get rid of
> the # sign to make it look more like an email address ;)
Well, we'll have to change something. It might not look pretty but still we
have to do something. Side note, the "/join" might get replaced by another
syntax in the new protocol (which doesn't say IRC2 compatibility will be
thrown away).


> So individual networks could run their own channel servers with
> services/registrations of their choice and independent people could run
> their own channel servers with their own features yeah?
I don't see why not. ;)
Advantages: users get a lot of choice and since everyone can easily add their
own server, there won't be staff fights about politics in terms of features
supplied by the channel server.


> Okay! So we could have DALNet with just client servers with its users using
> someone elses channel servers and Quakenet with its own channel servers as
> well as client servers yeah? (BTW mail domains can have multiple MX records
> which have a priority number and are used in a fashion similar to DNS
> round-robin so you could have 5 mail servers for a single domain) :)
Yes, and you might even have ChannelNet that only offers channels but no
client servers.
Round robins are something we could think about too. That
would bring back a bit of the old "multiple servers on one domain" feeling.
Sounds good.


> I have an idea about this but it's very.....political! At the end of the day
> this is more a network politics issue rather than a protocol design issue.
Whatever you can think of, let's discuss it. I'd really love some more threads
in this list. :)


> >  ... but I'm not sure yet whether it'll be scalable enough. In the very
> >  worst case, it will become a little laggy with a huge lot of servers.
> I agree...this is one aspect that will need an awful lot of discussion and
> design work.
Even though I said earlier that I want this on the -code list, I do now think
it's too much of a protocol question to move it away from here. I'll start a
new thread about it later.


> Personally if this regional index was to be of any use it would have to
> contain true information otherwise it's about as useful as /whois and it
> would just be a duplicate and waste don't you think unless I've got the
> point of this regional index totally wrong? (which is entirely possible!)
It's about as useful as /whois, that's right. However, with a syncless
network, we don't have a global /whois any longer - it's restricted to your
local server. Those regional indices would jump in and offer something alike.


That's it for now. By the way, I've added a new page to the website. Pheer.
\o\

regards,
jast