WoW UI Dev IRC - Poll
 

So by now most of you that already use the IRC channel on Freenode have heard the news about the sale of the network. Here is a staff letter about it, if you haven't.

So, we are asking what you, the author community, want to do moving forward, given that information. We have 4 options:

Stay on Freenode;
Move to Libera; or
Shut down the IRC channel completely and just all move to the existing server on Discord;
Do nothing for now, wait and see how it all falls out (which is kinda option 1).

Please respond to the poll.

PLEASE ONLY VOTE IF YOU ARE ACTIVELY USING THE IRC CHANNEL!

I haven't used IRC other that the listen bot so these questions may be uninformed.

Isn't IRC a link between Blizz. devs and addon authors?
If so, what weight might there preference or restrictioons on what they can use have on this (given the Discord is "WoWI's I believe)?

As an answer, Discord as it's already doing 99% of the job otherwise no preference.

No, this has moved to Discord in recent months.

I'm not heavily invested, fair to say I visit iRC a couple times a year other than reading the mirror.

That said the fact it's not a hugely popular medium along with logs going back years and a place where mostly nerds hang out, you can find really great snippets of information you can't find anywhere else.

So I'd vote to keep it and move it to a better network.

I know Discord is the hot new thing and I'm using it excessively myself but it's not without skeletons in its closet (many security and privacy concerns) or guaranteed to be a platform you'd be happy supporting in perpetuity through policy or ownership changes.

I find some value in preserving the old medium than end up in a situation where we jump from platform to platform.

Well, unless the owner of purl goes in and removes them all, the logs will remain.

I didn't vote, for the reason mentioned. I've used IRC a few times but only when I needed a specific answer that I couldn't get elsewhere. But that was years ago. Was never really a fan of it. I do use Discord now so if it moves in that direction, I'll happily join to help or get help. Otherwise, it doesn't really affect me.

Edit: Is there already a Discord for WoWI/MMOUI?

There is one for WoW UI Devs in general. Just like with the IRC, it wasn't set up with the idea of being site-specific, it's for all devs to be able to talk, ask questions & get answers, generally support each other.

Ah, OK. Wasn't aware of it.

I'm not an active Wow Addon dev so take my opinion with a grain of salt, but I'm active in Sailfish OS (as developer at Jolla), some foss projects when needed at work and in Arch Linux.

This is my personal opinion but IRC still has the lowest barrier of entry, it does not track users in any way. runs on almost everything and is standardized so it does not depend on any operator, so no issues when stuff like this happens again.

As a dev it is very helpful that I can just /join on a particular channel and get help or contribute.

All this is not possible with discord, it creates all the same potential issues and more. Discord is centralised proprietary and only allows access with their client. If you want a more modern client without a bouncer users can join via matrix.

A possible alternative is OFTC which is not operated by the same staff from Freenode and is more established.
Some FOSS projects like freedesktop.org, qemu and GCC have moved there or where there before.


EDIT: Seems like some already joined #wowuidev on Libera, I checked OFTC there are none there so far.

Given this: https://www.devever.net/~hl/freenode_suicide

Maybe it's time to finally do a migration to somewhere else?

Freenode is effectively dead at this point. There are currently 16 people still in #wowuidev on the old freenode network, which can be connected to on rinnegan.freenode.net. That channel will soon be completely gone when the old freenode network is completely shutdown. There are 24 people in #wowuidev on Libera.Chat, but the channel is unregistered and unmoderated at this point.

I agree. The only question I have is how can discord be an option?

They have pretty much made our decision for us.


https://twitter.com/alyxw/status/140...425338368?s=20

And the maintainer on the software they changed to said that they won't support them (Freenode) in any way.

Plus apparently they k-lined anyone that was connecting via IRCCloud. (Example, Dolby is banned).


We're pulling the plug. Go to the discord channel (link).


Not going to bother setting up on Libera unless there is much screaming for it.

I don't have access to discord, I would like to have access, please.

Thank you in advance

The link is inside Cairenn's 15 Jun reply just above yours, in the brackets.

Thanks but as I said it does not work for me. I need some admin to unblock me.

Moorea, PM me please. You were banned from the discord server for good reason, as you well know, and we need to have one heck of a discussion before anyone will even consider letting you back in. Also, fyi, I will be looping Dolby and Stanzilla in on the convo, for obvious reasons.