As you know, several weeks ago we made the choice to move our main IRC presence from Freenode to Libera.chat due to some changes in the management of the Freenode network. You can, of course, find details about that elsewhere.
Meanwhile, due to the name recognition of Freenode, people continue to show up every day on #centos@Freenode to ask questions, and are met with silence, because the experts have moved over to Libera. Those users are therefore not getting their questions answered.
The trouble is, Freenode has a policy that we cannot put the new channel location (ie, irc.Libera.chat) in the /topic, and attempts to redirect those people to Libera tend to get people scolded or kicked off channel, which further worsens these users' experience.
So ... all that to say ... if you are able to answer beginner-to-intermediate CentOS questions, and are able/willing to hang out on the #centos channel on freenode.net, your presence would be welcome. Network staff have confirmed that it's ok to send people to Libera.chat when we're unable to provide answers, but they would like to attempt rebuild an expert community there.
I'm hesitantly willing to assume, for the moment, that this is in good faith - there are, as far as I can tell, some good staff members left there, and, after all, this is about helping users.
After discussions with a number of people, I would like to apologize for my message, and retract it, and ask that you disregard my call for volunteers.
While I have a tendency to want to believe the best of people, it is clearer to me now that, in this case, it is unwarranted and potentially damaging to our community to try to do so.
The new management of Freenode is not acting in the best interests of this community or any other.
I humbly apologize, in particular, to John, for any disrespect he feels from my sending this email. While that was not my intent, I understand his feelings, and hope he will forgive me.
I will continue to stay on #centos and forward people to Libera.chat, which is our official IRC presence, until such time that the Freenode staff makes it clear I'm no longer welcome to do so and kick me off -- which appears to be the stance they are taking on other project channels when they try to redirect to an official location.
On 6/25/21 2:19 PM, Rich Bowen wrote:
As you know, several weeks ago we made the choice to move our main IRC presence from Freenode to Libera.chat due to some changes in the management of the Freenode network. You can, of course, find details about that elsewhere.
Thanks for trying Rich. I think the move we made from freenode to Libera was absolutely the right call and I'm glad we made it and made it early (thank you to those who helped make that happen). Still, I know how confusing it is for community members who may not have been aware of the move (or even the freenode drama). I hope we can help continue to get the word out. Maybe we need some CentOS branded s/freenode/Libera/g stickers or something.
-Mike
On Fri, Jun 25, 2021 at 2:42 PM Rich Bowen rbowen@redhat.com wrote:
After discussions with a number of people, I would like to apologize for my message, and retract it, and ask that you disregard my call for volunteers.
While I have a tendency to want to believe the best of people, it is clearer to me now that, in this case, it is unwarranted and potentially damaging to our community to try to do so.
The new management of Freenode is not acting in the best interests of this community or any other.
I humbly apologize, in particular, to John, for any disrespect he feels from my sending this email. While that was not my intent, I understand his feelings, and hope he will forgive me.
I will continue to stay on #centos and forward people to Libera.chat, which is our official IRC presence, until such time that the Freenode staff makes it clear I'm no longer welcome to do so and kick me off -- which appears to be the stance they are taking on other project channels when they try to redirect to an official location.
On 6/25/21 2:19 PM, Rich Bowen wrote:
As you know, several weeks ago we made the choice to move our main IRC presence from Freenode to Libera.chat due to some changes in the management of the Freenode network. You can, of course, find details about that elsewhere.
CentOS-devel mailing list CentOS-devel@centos.org https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos-devel
On Fri, 2021-06-25 at 15:14 -0500, Mike McGrath wrote:
Thanks for trying Rich. I think the move we made from freenode to Libera was absolutely the right call and I'm glad we made it and made it early (thank you to those who helped make that happen). Still, I know how confusing it is for community members who may not have been aware of the move (or even the freenode drama). I hope we can help continue to get the word out. Maybe we need some CentOS branded s/freenode/Libera/g stickers or something.
-Mike
Hi,
To make some people aware and give more prominence to the switch, maybe pin the announce tweet of May 19th on twitter for a while, so for those who use that particular platform it is the first thing seen when visiting the projects account.
Regards
Phil
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Mike McGrath -
Philip Wyett -
Rich Bowen