On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 1:25 AM, Jon scream@datascreamer.com wrote:
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Joe Szilagyi wrote:
Is there legitimate reason it would not be more beneficial and easier to simply set up something like irc.wikimedia.org and host it in-house?
I made a suggestion that we change networks or run our own during the meeting.
The bandwidth requirements would be infinitesimal and it could could be placed where Wikimedia's traffic is the least costly if bandwidth were really an issue.
There would be a couple of interesting possible benefits:
* Long term login integration with SUL: Have Wikimedia SUL logins function as IRC logins. ** Automatic permissions, we could overlay the existing wiki permissions onto IRC lowering the amount of special IRC management required. Adminship on enwp would permit you ops in #wikipedia-en ** Possibilities of extending IP blocks on projects automatically to IRC. ;) ** Other integration: Things like chanserv telling you that you have new talk page messages.. etc. * More consistent handling of private data: Even if you have a freenode cloak anyone can get your IP if you use freenode by doing a /whois on you at the moment you connect. This could be resolved by obscuring the IP. * Improved reliability: In the decade or so that I've used freenode it has *always* been the least reliable IRC network that I use. I still see netsplits multiple times per week on good weeks, and multiple times per day on bad weeks.. It's not so bad as to be debilitating, as seanw put it, but it's obnoxious. Wikimedia's datacenter interconnectivity is better than this, and the more limited scope of a Wikimedia IRC would make scaling somewhat easier.
I see three downsides: * IRC goes down when the Wikimedia network is down. At a minimum the tech folks will probably need to maintain a presence on another IRC network. I expect that the tech folks are far more likely to have other channels of interest on other networks than general Wikimedia contributors.. All modern irc clients support multiple networks easily.
* It's another possible distraction for the tech team. More software to maintain. ... although not much of one since we already run a limited IRC server for the RC feeds.
* It's another service that Wikimedia would be offering, carrying its own possible overheads though I expect that these would be small, easy to avoid, and mostly fold into the overheads of the projects.