Obviously some developers do feel that it's worth discussing. Not sure that we need to stop them (Lord knows we discuss other topics to great lengths). However I invite you to sit this one out if you disagree. Just don't cut others off in the process.
As a good steward of the wiki community I think we as Wikimedia should care if Freenode no longer supports wikis.
Before I posted the page on meta there was discussion of a mtg during unconference at Wikimania. That was because of bot issues - which wm does care about - the wiki rejections was an additional catalyst.
I'm waiting for confirmation on if they are indeed no longer accepting wikis or if there was just confusion with some apps. Although I'm hearing others are having problems as well. Also, my understanding is they don't see wikimedia channels as an exception but rather allowed because of MediaWiki being wm's qualifying open source software project. So our status as an exception depends on if you're in the camp that says MediaWiki is core to WM's work or not.
I'm not sure it's in Freenodes best interest to grow to Wikimedia's needs or requests - but I'd be thrilled if they did and am optimistic they may if we ask and explain why. I'm also not yet sold on WM having their own as being the best solution - but I think it's worth discussing. Is there documentation of the last several discussions that apparently took place on this topic which folks can look over? Adding it to that wiki page may help this from coming up yet again.
Either way - I fail to see how it hurts us to discuss this and considering talking to Freenode about our concerns. I can't imagine they'd be hostile to that conversation happening.
-Greg
____________ Sent from my iPhone. Apologies for any typos. A more detailed response may be sent later.
On Jun 21, 2012, at 8:55 AM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
Petr Bena wrote:
On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 10:03 AM, Sébastien Santoro dereckson@espace-win.org wrote:
On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 9:35 AM, Petr Bena benapetr@gmail.com wrote:
One developer recently complained about some freenode policies, specifically that wiki projects (wikipedia etc has some kind of exception) are no longer allowed to be hosted on freenode network, which is supposed to host only opensource projects. It's fact that as the wikimedia project is becoming more large the freenode is getting less and less suitable.
You have the right to say anything, you've the duty to prove it.
Could you support your three claims: (i) only open source projects are allowed on Freenode (ii) Wikimedia has an exception (iii) Freenode can't scale with Wikimedia projects growth
1: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC/Hosts#See_also there is a reference 2: Wikipedia channels are allowed, the mere fact that others are not makes it an exception 3: I never said that
Regarding that Meta-Wiki link, you're referencing a footnote that reads:
Recent rejection email sent to a wiki project: "Whilst I'm sure that your project has many admirable goals, it does not appear to be centric to the concepts of free software, and so is not topical for our network. We are imposing stricter criteria on new project registrations lately due to some other registered groups having to be recinded. With this in mind, I'm afraid we will need to reject this grf, and if you wish to use freenode for your IRC channel, suggest that you take the "##" channel instead."
This may be true, but even if so, I don't think it's really relevant.
As I understand it, freenode has no issue hosting Wikimedia channels (and actively encourages it, even). Back when Rob was alive, he offered Tim an o line to try to get _more_ of Wikimedia's channels (in particular, the RC feeds that live on irc.wikimedia.org) on freenode.
This particular discussion (regarding using irc.wikimedia.org for chat) has come up a few times and isn't really worth re-hashing, I don't think.
MZMcBride
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