[Wikipedia-l] [Fwd: Re: [Wikitech-l] IRC question]

Mon Jun 7 07:46:27 UTC 2004

Since this message was cross-posted to Wikipedia-l, I'm forwarding my 
reply here as well.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] IRC question
Date: Mon, 07 Jun 2004 00:43:34 -0700
From: Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com>
Reply-To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org>
To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org>
References: <004d01c44c5e$ac5dc600$d100a8c0 at arcsy.co.jp>

Guillaume Blanchard wrote:
> Hi,
> Why don't host IRC chanels on wikimedia servers ? (ie. irc.wikimedia.org)

"Don't put all your eggs in one basket."

If our servers are cut off, we could lose that communications channel as
well. (This is already a risk with the mailing lists. We have an offsite
backup MX but it doesn't always go smoothly.)

Also, IRC would be yet another service susceptible to load problems,
denial of service attacks, and various abuses. I feel much more
comfortable with the dedicated effort that the Freenode folks put into
running an IRC network well.

> Freenode may vanish day, we have better to get ready for that.
> It may be also nice to offer people under firewall a Web interface to be
> able to acces IRC even at office (as Shaihulud do for some of us with
> CGI:IRC).

We'll cross that bridge when we come to it; Freenode is a great
resource, and serves a lot of free software projects and users. I don't
understand why any planning is necessary when it's a simple matter of
setting up a channel somewhere else.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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