In light of the botnet attack and general trolling that's been hitting the chat and some of the peripheral channels, 19 is being set to +R in approximately 24 hours. The topic has temporarily been changed, and will be reverted to what it was after this happens. Either myself or someone else will be appending the Chat Guide to explain how to register a nick.
I'm not sure that's a good idea.
Admin, SCP Wiki
Why not? The only alternatives that have been suggested so far are, in no particular order, changing networks, permanent +m and giving everyone voice, or, well, nothing.
Changing networks is a bad idea for the following reasons:
- We would pretty much all have to re-register our nicks, channel(s), and reallocate op privileges.
- It's easy to connect to different networks, meaning we would probably just be followed and have to deal with this stuff on another network, seeing as how nothing's actually been done to address it.
- Given the above, they could simply register our nicks or our channels before we do, ninja a nick and be erroneously given op, etc.
In short, it's nothing but a pain in the ass that won't work anyway.
As for permanent +m and giving everyone voice:
- That means that either an op must be watching constantly to give newbies voice, which frankly isn't likely seeing as how we're all human, or they sit around twiddling their thumbs idly, unable to say anything.
- If someone isn't registered, they'll need to be re-voiced every time they join, which brings us back to the first point.
- It also means that, should we need to silence the channel to make an announcement, to call a stop to or redirect a conversation, or what have you, we can't, because everyone can just keep talking anyway.
- As I've said elsewhere, it wouldn't stop flooding the channel with connect and disconnect messages nor nickchange messages.
This is also a headache and won't really achieve anything appreciable.
Now, for setting the channel to +R:
- Actually prevents botnet attacks on the channel, or at least makes them more tedious, because each nick attempting to connect would have to be individually registered.
- Makes ban evasion/sockpuppeting more tedious and easier to spot.
- Each evading nick would have to be registered, and it's possible to check a given nick's date of registration. Meaning, if we suspect someone of being a ban evader, and their nick was registered soon after we dropped the hammer, we have a bit of circumstantial evidence to back us up.
- Would be incentive to actually read the chat guide, as people who don't aren't going to realize the channel is +R and thus, may not be able to connect. If they do read it, they will find a helpfully written guide to registering their names as well as the rules of the chat. If they don't read the guide, kinda not our problem.
No, it's not perfect, but it's the simplest idea that would actually accomplish something appreciable.
Alright. You've convinced me. *is now in favour of +R*
Piffy is an SCP Foundation Moderator, Lv. 9001 Squishy Wizard, and Knight of the Red Pen.
How about we stick with what me and Sophos have been doing for months: setting channel bans. The actual trolls tend to come in from one channel, and stopping that is as simple as banning anyone who's in that channel from entering 19.
Circumventing it is as simple as leaving the banned channel, which they did yesterday while flooding 19 with NSFW stuff, and does nothing to prevent botnets attacking the channel.
And guess what, it isn't remotely working. We've already had psudeosage come back at least once, as well as someone called Tain doing the same CTCP spamming as the last ones.