Issues with freenode irc

[jasnell]

I don't know how active the node.js freenode irc has been these days (if at all) but given the issues that are happening there, we may want to distance ourselves from it.

Refs: https://gist.github.com/joepie91/df80d8d36cd9d1bde46ba018af497409
Refs: https://nodejs.org/en/get-involved/

[targos]

I personally stopped using IRC a few months ago because I was unable to sign in to irccloud. Now I reluctantly use the openjs slack.

[devsnek]

dunno about #node.js but I think something we could do proactively is wipe out mentions of #node-dev

[targos]

https://github.com/tc39/Reflector/issues/374 is probably a private repo (I don't have access)

[jasnell]

tc39/Reflector/issues/374 is probably a private repo (I don't have access)

Ah right yeah... good point.

[ljharb]

The node channels are safely owned on libera, so moving there would be pretty straightforward.

We'll need to "register the project" with libera staff, but we'll be fine in the meantime.

[mhdawson]

I've not using IRC much recently either. If there is still active use, I agree we might want to move.

[mcollina]

This was recently published: https://freenode.net/news/freenode-is-foss.

[ljharb]

A number of projects - Ubuntu, zsh, couchdb, etc - have officially moved to libera, fwiw

• http://zsh.sourceforge.net/Arc/irc.html
• https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-irc/2021-May/001923.html
• https://twitter.com/couchdb/status/1395389989345800201?s=21

[MylesBorins]

TBH I think that if we are planning to move off freenode we should just switch off IRC as a default chat. The primary benefit, imho, to freenode was the center of gravity. If we are going to move that I think it is worth revisiting IRC as a platform altogether.

[ljharb]

Do you mean for the community, or for the project team? I think those are two very different sets of considerations.

[MylesBorins]

@ljharb I'm talking about for the project team. If we want to "officially migrate" the #nodejs I think that would be more the responsibility of the ops in that channel and perhaps the @nodejs/community-committee ... as we are in the TSC repo I was focusing on project co-ordination

[bnb]

Happy to help enable the project and the community to move to whatever platform. I'd +1 @MylesBorins's assertion that if we're going to move, it should probably be off of IRC as a whole... especially since a lot of those in leadership who I thought were active seem to have stopped being active on IRC.

I'd also like to be upfront that I'm kinda cautious about this, as we've had discussions around this for years and it's directly burnt people out and caused them to leave the project. Years ago I had to give up being opinionated as a form of self-care in this specific discourse. Given that, I'm happy to help support whatever the project decides to go with and provide any context that would be helpful (like how the Electron Discord is going / lessons learned).

[Trott]

Here is a screen-capture of the only two messages (off-topic) in the #node-dev channel on Freenode in the last week:

I think we probably should remove mention of #node-dev from the repo and put some kind of auto-message in the room telling people it's not monitored anymore. That will also mean change in the moderation repo, I think, since IRC mods are included in there somewhere in the docs.

[ljharb]

@Trott to be fair, i'm still monitoring it, but in that case i was hesitant to point the person at the #node.js freenode channel if there's going to be a decision to officially migrate it to libera (where it exists, and is monitored, by the same people)

[Trott]

I guess my point wasn't so much that the person didn't get an answer but that nobody has had anything on-topic to say in over a week.

I'm OK with keeping it if we have active projects folks using it. I definitely don't log in to IRC nearly as much as I used to.