[Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] IRC Group Contacts Surgery, August 2009

[Sean Whitton]

Hi,

On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 19:32, <WJhonson at aol.com> wrote:
> A few years ago, I had asked that IRC have a searchable archive of
> discussions.  I was told that there were daily logs and I could get one if  I
> asked.  I asked, and was denied.  Until IRC commits itself to  openness, it
> should have little to no impact on any facet of our project.   Without searchable
> archives, IRC is not open in the modern sense, regardless of  who or how
> you can join it, or view it.  The archives of this mailing list  are
> searchable.

On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 11:46, <wjhonson at aol.com> wrote:
> Why couldn't the logs be released to the public ?

Wikimedia's IRC channels have a (very) long-standing no public logging
policy with the argument that IRC is not on-wiki and the extra freedom
of no logs encourages people to float ideas that they might not
otherwise dare to suggest. There are other arguments too.

There are plenty of us that disagree with this policy despite being in
the front line in enforcing it, including myself. To me, it's foolish
because it's totally unenforceable. The people we don't want to post
logs - i.e. the trolls - still do so on their various websites,
meaning that little is achieved with the policy other than giving ops
a good reason to ban troublesome users. There was however little
consensus to change the policy when discussions were held maybe a year
ago, so nothing was altered, and we continue to enforce the policy as
best we can.

S

-- 
Sean Whitton / <sean at silentflame.com>
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