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Ashen
Idler
Joined: 05 Jan 2004
Posts: 285
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 Posted: Jun 15, 2004 10:33pm Post subject: |
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That's exactly it - each ircd has its own methods for user communication, but they're isolated and seperated by ircd. It seems worthwhile to create a guild where admins can get together and learn from each other / hash out solutions to common problems, irrespective of what ircd they use or what network they come from.
I don't want to see the AG duplicate existing ircd documentation, that, for the reasons you specify,
would indeed be a bad idea. I DO want to see it create documentation on things like:
* the non-technical aspects of running a server
* the political aspects of running an irc network
* objective comparisons of the various ircd/services packages out there
and so on.
In short, avoid duplication, and address things that don't seem to get addressed in other places. |
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mentor
Newbie
Joined: 22 Jun 2004
Posts: 74
Location: San Diego, CA
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| Posted: Jul 14, 2004 8:13am Post subject: |
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| Ashen wrote: | Syntax:
There are quite simply too many users for us to accomadate into the AG at the moment without it bursting. It is an AG, not a UG.
There are already other places (like your CERT-IRC) where coders gather, this is a place targetted at admins.
Of course if we get good momentum then we may forge links with other IRC related communities such as CERT-IRC : "help! someone just found a new exploit on our network, could you look at it and see if other
ircds are vulnurable / see if it's fixable?" : but for the moment, we are building, and we are building *as a group for admins*.
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I understand that the purpose of IRCAG is in fact to create a group *for* admins; however, according to its mission statements and comments posted to this list one of its goals is to better the IRC community. Administrators are a minority (followed by opers and programmers) in the IRC community. Any significant change is going to require full community support (i.e. users, programmers, etc). By closing membership to only network administrators IRCAG is in fact excluding 95% of the IRC community. Network administrators may have overall power on their respective networks; however, their actions and policies are largely dictated by their users and technical limitations.
My point is, IRCAG needs to re-think about extending membership to other segments of the IRC community if they truly wish to achieve their goals.
DISCLOSURE: Some may view this as me trying to find a way to join. So, to dispell such claims, I could in fact apply as I do meet membership requirements (as posted) and have simply chosen not to as I feel (at the present moment) that this is nothing more than a rehash of such groups I'm already a member of.
By all means though, good luck with your community/group. |
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Mary
SearchIRC Admin
Joined: 03 May 2003
Posts: 692
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| Posted: Jul 14, 2004 10:00am Post subject: |
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I'm going to jump in here, just to point out that opinions of individual members of the IRCAG do not necessarily reflect the position of the IRCAG organization as a whole. Please see http://searchirc.com/ircag/?mission%20statement for the IRCAG Mission Statement. Sign up and you'll be able to access the IRCAG Members Only Pages which describe the various projects underway.
| Quote: | | If admins need to learn something, all they need to do is read the documentation provided by the project from which the software came from. Any other additional information can be found by searching http://www.google.com/bsd. |
Since this information has been available for years, then why is IRC such a mess? Clearly this material is NOT preparing everyone for running an IRC network. The questions that we get from administrators and wannabes shows a serious lack of understanding and resources for them to learn. We hope to fill that gap with reliable data and experienced mentors.
| Quote: | | The FreeBSD handbook, as well as the online books and articles linked within the FreeBSD website, are also an excellent source of information for beginners, from which they can start out by learning how to configure and use the OS, IP filter firewalls, kernel configuration, file permissions, and other important aspects before they learn how to operate the IRCd software, such as UnrealIRCd/UltimateIRCd, IRCd-Hybrid/CS/IRCd-Ratbox, Bahamut, or IRCu. |
Definitely a good resource for those who ALREADY have a basic knowledge of Unix, have decided to run BSD, and know which IRCd they want. But very few admin wannabes are at that level. The majority are closer to, "I want to run a chat system for my church/group/friends, can I run it from my home computer or do I need some special setup?" Send them to the FreeBSD handbook and they will come back and ask, "Will this run on Windows?"
Stop thinking Big Four IRC Nets, and start thinking THOUSANDS of small, specialized networks with administrators who are flying by the seat of their pants and taking advice from self proclaimed "experts".
| Quote: | | I must agree on an issue that an important issue of 'the "evilness" of many admins' has not been taken in account. |
Not to get into a pissing contest, but the number of networks SearchIRC lists is now over 2000, our staff has personally visited every one of those networks, spoken with the administrators and staff on most of them, and worked with them as networks merge and administrations change. We have decades of combined experience as IRC admins, small network and large.
I respectfully suggest you underestimate our knowledge of IRC admins.
| Quote: | | Most of the time, admins cannot be happy with the number of users they do have, and therefore go to extremes... |
This is like saying MOST users on IRC are incorrigibly evil and attack each other. If you said "some" I would agree. There is definitely an element both within the user and administrator population who believe DoS attacks are an accepted part of the wild west world of IRC. But I wouldn't say "most of the time" at all. Most people simply want to run their little corner of IRC smoothly for their friends to enjoy.
It benefits networks to be listed on SearchIRC. By publicizing networks and their channels we bring more users, larger channels, volunteer staff, servers interested in linking, etc. Currently we do not feature any network above the rest. IRCAG has several projects underway that will recognize outstanding networks, and people who have contributed to IRC, and give them the publicity they deserve. In this way, IRC networks who embrace an ethical, usercentric philosophy, and reject activities aimed against other networks, will benefit greatly. Spam and attacks are a means to an end. If they do not produce the results wanted, then the occurance will diminish. Any network that engages in unethical activities will NOT be on the list. Their tactics will backfire as users will avoid them.
The failure of similar projects doesn't concern us, because our goal is to contribute to IRC. To promote the medium. Make it better. Help it to evolve. We can do that even with a minimum effort. And, who knows... SearchIRC was the first real IRC search engine and others that were started since, are dropping by the wayside. They failed, we're going stronger than ever. Ya never know. ;) |
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braindigitalis
Idler
Joined: 22 Sep 2003
Posts: 443
Location: IRC
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| Posted: Jul 15, 2004 11:37am Post subject: |
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There are working examples of collaberative efforts between networks. A big example of this is the irc-security mailing list at irc-unity, which im sure many of you here are members, and works very well.
Thanks,
Brain |
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mentor
Newbie
Joined: 22 Jun 2004
Posts: 74
Location: San Diego, CA
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| Posted: Jul 15, 2004 12:05pm Post subject: |
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| mregit wrote: | | Since this information has been available for years, then why is IRC such a mess? Clearly this material is NOT preparing everyone for running an IRC network. The questions that we get from administrators and wannabes shows a serious lack of understanding and resources for them to learn. We hope to fill that gap with reliable data and experienced mentors. |
IRC is not a mess because the documentation is not helpful -- I could list numerous outstanding documentation --, but for two underlying reasons I'll briefly touch on here. At least, what I believe to be the case based on 10+ years of experience in the IRC community.
1.) Lack of Initiative and Ignorance.
This is almost always the case for a great majority of users visiting help channels, new administrators really aren't that different as well.
Simply put, most new administrators and operators do not not take the time to read the documentation available. Instead, they expect others to spoon-feed them -- i.e. turning to discussion forums, mailing lists, etc demanding help when they haven't taken the time to read over the documentation provided by the programmers of the ircd they have chosen to use. Ignorance is no excuse -- if they expect to run a successful network then they should do their homework before embarking on this new venture. IRCAG won't change this with any new documentation.
2.) Standardization
There really aren't any set standards used across the IRC community. Taking ircd as an example, over the years this software has been split up into several different ircd's, which all are maintained by different teams and programmers. Some ircd's are very standard/compliant aware such as ircu, while others have completely gone the opposite direction -- i.e. Bahamut. |
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Ashen
Idler
Joined: 05 Jan 2004
Posts: 285
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| Posted: Jul 16, 2004 5:49am Post subject: |
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Mentor is right. I still think it is a good idea to at least try to improve documentation, in the hopes of reaching more people, however.
How do you tackle ignorance? with education, documentation...
How do you tackle lack of initiative? By doing something and encouraging others to do something.
-Ashen |
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katsklaw
Guru
Joined: 28 Jun 2004
Posts: 1122
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| Posted: Jul 16, 2004 7:26am Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
I understand that the purpose of IRCAG is in fact to create a group *for* admins; however, according to its mission statements and comments posted to this list one of its goals is to better the IRC community. Administrators are a minority (followed by opers and programmers) in the IRC community.
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Police officers undergo special training to become better police officers, this *DOES* help the community become better. By using this special training when out on patrol a police office can respond in a better informed fashion. That officer can now educate others and support their community through example and handle a crisis easier.
The IRCAG helps Admins with special training so they can then improve or run their commulity better and handle a crisis in a more informed and intelligent manner.
Example would be Joe Admin. Joe found out about IRC today from a friend that stumbled across it. Joe immediately installs an IRC client in the morning and plays with it. Joe then discovers IRC Servers in the afternoon. Joe likes the idea of being in charge and thinks he can handle the task, so he finds a provider and sets up a shell. It's now dinner time and he's thumbing through all the docs and technical notes that come with his IRCd and Services package. By bedtime Joe has them set up and connected.
So far Joe has known about IRC for about 24 hours, has an armory full of docs that helped him set-up his one server network, but nothing to educate him as to some do's and dont's on how to administrate his network. He has nothing that explains how some actions that he could likely do would attract some certain users. At this point he has no clue what a drone is ... what effects allowing warez does ... no clue that giving an O:Line to the wrong person can do .... etc ..
Enter IRCAG. The IRCAG will have the non-technical do's and don'ts ... stories of past experiences from other Network Admins that have had an IRC net for more than 24hours. IRCAG will help Joe become better informed, this in turn will better his network and the more Joe Admins you help .. the better the IRC community becomes.
There are books for IRC dummies and literally hundreds of resources for IRC users. It's time for the New Network Admins to have the same. |
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mentor
Newbie
Joined: 22 Jun 2004
Posts: 74
Location: San Diego, CA
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| Posted: Jul 19, 2004 6:01am Post subject: |
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| katsklaw wrote: |
Enter IRCAG. The IRCAG will have the non-technical do's and don'ts ... stories of past experiences from other Network Admins that have had an IRC net for more than 24hours. IRCAG will help Joe become better informed, this in turn will better his network and the more Joe Admins you help .. the better the IRC community becomes.
There are books for IRC dummies and literally hundreds of resources for IRC users. It's time for the New Network Admins to have the same. |
There are already organizations that offer what you have described above. What exactly is going to make IRCAG any different from the rest of them? IMO, nothing - just more choice of where such information can be obtained.
Instead of creating more IRC Admin communities, perhaps it would be beneficial to try something new. The more community involvement the better. Sure, informed admins is better for the IRC community, but the same input from developers/programmers and users makes it even more so. |
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Ashen
Idler
Joined: 05 Jan 2004
Posts: 285
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| Posted: Jul 19, 2004 8:53am Post subject: |
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Could you please cite extensive references as to these 'other places' that help educate admins in the ways we are?
By the way, the material I produce I do not produce specifically for the IRCAG... I produce it for admins in general and the IRCAG is just a convenient place for me to publish it, get comments, improve it, etc.
The AG is not some magic fountain that spews out wisdom. It's just a small meeting house for a few people who persue similar projects to get together and help each other / gain by co-operation.
(all this about how the AG is is imho - I don't speak for everyone, just myself).
The point here is that the institution that enables us to help admins is irrelavant. It is the product and the effects which count, not the place in which we do it.
With regard to user feedback...... that's what usercoms, IRC portals, and forums like this one you're in right now are for. Feel free to start another huge one if you like. The more the merrier.
-Ashen |
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katsklaw
Guru
Joined: 28 Jun 2004
Posts: 1122
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| Posted: Jul 19, 2004 7:34pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
There are already organizations that offer what you have described above. What exactly is going to make IRCAG any different from the rest of them? IMO, nothing - just more choice of where such information can be obtained. |
For the same reason there are more than one or two types of cars. Also if there is a lot of other sites .. they aren't doing to well because IRC is in distress ATM. |
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VVar
none
Joined: 07 Nov 2003
Posts: 27
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| Posted: Jul 19, 2004 8:28pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | There are already organizations that offer what you have described above. What exactly is going to make IRCAG any different from the rest of them? IMO, nothing - just more choice of where such information can be obtained. |
Where is the overabundance of "IRC Admin Communities?" Where is a good "IRC Admin Community" that wants to assist the less informed admin? I mean really, stop talking about them and point them out. People have been asking for good links since that was first said, not one has been posted. Frankly put up or shut up. I for one havent seen them, and Im taking it from the other questions asked by these guys they havent either.
Ye theres documentation out there, but to someone that wants to run an IRC Server/Network it is daunting. Honestly, for someone with no unix experience its like reading a dictionary in klingon, you have to look up the first word of the definition, ok thats a word, you have to then read another document to get the meaning of the second word. So on and so forth.
| Quote: | | The FreeBSD handbook, as well as the online books and articles linked within the FreeBSD website, are also an excellent source of information for beginners, from which they can start out by learning how to configure and use the OS, IP filter firewalls, kernel configuration, file permissions, and other important aspects before they learn how to operate the IRCd software |
Documents upon documents and more to understand the first. And the problem isnt always laziness but impatience. They dont want a server next year they want it now.
And, I know some of you believe only certain people should be able to run a IRC Server, the person should be able to blah blah blah, but the small network admin doesnt have to know the linux kernel inside out. He rarely runs his IRCd on his own linux box, but on a hosted shell with someone else to do that for him. It has nothing to do with how to BE an admin, how to run a network. Its a program that once you get configured is quite easy to run, but it has nothing to do with being a good admin.
This is a great idea, and it needs support, the post was made to let people know it was here so they could join if they wanted. You want to offer advice and tell them things to look out for thats cool.. but to continually down them and suggest they shouldnt try because some other idiot couldnt pull it off, heh, thats ignorant, and uncool.
I mean after all look what these guys did with the IRC Search!
'Nough said, eh? |
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mentor
Newbie
Joined: 22 Jun 2004
Posts: 74
Location: San Diego, CA
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| Posted: Jul 22, 2004 5:23am Post subject: |
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| VVar wrote: |
Where is the overabundance of "IRC Admin Communities?" Where is a good "IRC Admin Community" that wants to assist the less informed admin? I mean really, stop talking about them and point them out. People have been asking for good links since that was first said, not one has been posted. Frankly put up or shut up. I for one havent seen them, and Im taking it from the other questions asked by these guys they havent either. |
No one said these organizations were in overabundance, but rather they already exist. If you read all the posts on this list you would have noticed some of these organizations have already been listed. There is nothing wrong with adding another one to the mix (i.e. IRCAG), but what exactly is it goint to offer? Community? That exists. Know-how/expertise? That exists. Documentation? That exists. And so forth. Why not try something different?
| Quote: | | Documents upon documents and more to understand the first. And the problem isnt always laziness but impatience. They dont want a server next year they want it now. |
If they don't have the patience to read the documents, then what makes you think they will have the patience to read any new documentation? IMHO, if this is the case, then they shouldn't be running an IRC server in the first place.
| Quote: | And, I know some of you believe only certain people should be able to run a IRC Server, the person should be able to blah blah blah, but the small network admin doesnt have to know the linux kernel inside out. He rarely runs his IRCd on his own linux box, but on a hosted shell with someone else to do that for him. It has nothing to do with how to BE an admin, how to run a network. Its a program that once you get configured is quite easy to run, but it has nothing to do with being a good admin.
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I would have to disagree. The admin should have a basic working knowledge of the OS and ircd he/she chooses to use. This is why there is an admin in the first place. For the upkeep of the server and/or network. It is not wise to run a program when you have no clue what it does or how to properly configure it -- running an ircd is no exception.
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This is a great idea, and it needs support, the post was made to let people know it was here so they could join if they wanted. You want to offer advice and tell them things to look out for thats cool.. but to continually down them and suggest they shouldnt try because some other idiot couldnt pull it off, heh, thats ignorant, and uncool.
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You're right, it is a great idea. I'm not nor have I seen others putting IRCAG 'down,' but rather asking what they plan to offer to distinguish them from the others.
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I mean after all look what these guys did with the IRC Search!
'Nough said, eh? |
Again, I agree. This is a great site. |
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w00t
Eleet
Joined: 09 Jun 2004
Posts: 699
Location: Nowra, Australia
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| Posted: Jul 22, 2004 9:09pm Post subject: |
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| Well, if you actually join the IRC-AG, as I now have, you will see that it is rather different... |
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Dolguldur
none
Joined: 17 Mar 2004
Posts: 3
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| Posted: Sep 14, 2004 5:03am Post subject: IRC Networks plicy |
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Some said something about spamming, ddos bots, etc... and the point was "they do not look for what is good for all irc networks, but for what is good for my network".
I disagree, in IRC Hispano we believe it is possible to cooperate. Large networks must join forces in order to survive to certain threats. I will offer my time and knowledge in order to achieve a better IRC experience to my users and, by extension, to users all around the world.
In other hand, spamming, warez, child pornography and any other ilegal stuff (under Spanish law) is prosecuted in our network. I believe it does not matter if those users go to other "more permisive" networks. We just do not want that kind or trash at home.
What do I mean with all this talk? The point is:
it is possible to create a forum where admins discuss about regulations, standards etc...in order to create better communities. That does not mean we are not in a competitive world, it just mean to follow certain rules that will benefit all of us (including, of coure, users)
regards |
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Ofloo
none
Joined: 16 Jan 2004
Posts: 24
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| Posted: Aug 01, 2005 7:17am Post subject: |
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| that site of yours seems to be down |
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