We now have an IRC server set up, for the sole purpose of delivering recent changes information. All discussion channels will stay at Freenode.

The problem with using Freenode was that it was hard to maintain, both for us and for them. We had to use 10 different connections to avoid flooding off, and if they all connected at once, the server would be K: lined. Despite the best efforts of the Freenode staff, the exemptions they set up were not robust, especially when the configuration changed on either end.

With our own IRC server, we can have a single connection for all channels. The bot is exempted from flood controls. This makes it much easier to maintain. We can also create as many channels as we like -- one for every wiki.

We don't want to have to administer a general-purpose IRC server. That's something Freenode does a good job of and we don't want to reproduce. So we've patched ircd such that non-opers can't send messages to channels. Keeping our discussion channels on another network is also useful for coordination in the event of failure on our network.

The server hostname is irc.wikimedia.org, that's 207.142.131.229 for those people still having DNS cache problems.

-- Tim Starling