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Updated 2023-07-12: Hello, Guest! Welcome back, and be sure to check out this follow-up post about our outage a week or so ago.
Mibbit
- Thread starter MrMacPlus
- Start date
~tl
68kMLA Admin Emeritus
Cheers for pointing that out. I've switched over to the official Freenode web interface, unless anyone else has a better suggestion?
http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=68kmla
http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=68kmla
Any word on whether or not this change is permanent? On dozens of occassions before I've tried to connect to freenode with mibbit only to find that it had been blocked for a few days. I suspect it's a spam management tecnique whereby they probably (maybe even correctly) estimate that like 5% of the people using mibbit are legitimately chatting, and the rest are evading bans (common in #68kMLA unfortunately) or otherwise spamming.
Mike Richardson
Banned
The notion an individual can be truly and permanently banned from any service on the internet is fallacious.
I remember this one BF1942 server. It was the only good one where you could play "Battle of Britain" with a lot of people. They were (are?) super nazi about using expletives. Even using "damn" would get you auto-kicked, and "shit" got you a week's ban if an admin was on. If you typed "s***", it would evade the auto-kick but piss off an admin who would ban you for two weeks for evading the auto-kick. (If I am grateful for one 68kMLA forum policy, it's that we don't have language nannies here. In respect of that, I try to self-regulate my use of expletives. This is in stark contrast to the IRC channel, where language rules are arbitrarily enforced, as if a 12 year old child is going to figure out how to log on to that particular IRC network and channel, and then be scarred for life because he saw the s-word. I avoid the IRC channel and do not feel welcome there for that reason.)
I had to play on there using a number of VPNs, proxies, and "other" CD keys (I purchased the game legitimately though), because I would inevitably type an expletive into the chat for some reason. Maybe it was a day, or a few weeks, but it would happen. I understood the ban on expletives, even if their argument was weak (children playing the game - it's a war game that's rated "T"), but I also thought that being banned for typing "s***" was just plain ridiculous. It even got to the point that they banned two Germans because they were typing in German into the chat and the admin thought they might be using expletives.
I only bothered because I wanted to play that map online and no other Battle of Britain servers ever had any people on them. Everyone gravitated towards this one server for whatever reason, so they had a de-facto monopoly on that map. I even tried to run my own server for a couple of months but nobody would use it.
Before everyone here rattles on about how it's their server and it's their rules and all that other rot - yes, I'm fully aware of that. Go start your own server, you might say - I did that, and it just doesn't work that way. It was a lot easier and cheaper to just find a new way to log into their server and keep playing. I followed all the other rules except for the one about language.
The problem with banning Mibbit is that you are just inconveniencing some legitimate users while causing the malicious users to come up with a new solution - which they inevitably will, without fail, every time, just as I logged onto that server again and again and kept on playing.
I remember this one BF1942 server. It was the only good one where you could play "Battle of Britain" with a lot of people. They were (are?) super nazi about using expletives. Even using "damn" would get you auto-kicked, and "shit" got you a week's ban if an admin was on. If you typed "s***", it would evade the auto-kick but piss off an admin who would ban you for two weeks for evading the auto-kick. (If I am grateful for one 68kMLA forum policy, it's that we don't have language nannies here. In respect of that, I try to self-regulate my use of expletives. This is in stark contrast to the IRC channel, where language rules are arbitrarily enforced, as if a 12 year old child is going to figure out how to log on to that particular IRC network and channel, and then be scarred for life because he saw the s-word. I avoid the IRC channel and do not feel welcome there for that reason.)
I had to play on there using a number of VPNs, proxies, and "other" CD keys (I purchased the game legitimately though), because I would inevitably type an expletive into the chat for some reason. Maybe it was a day, or a few weeks, but it would happen. I understood the ban on expletives, even if their argument was weak (children playing the game - it's a war game that's rated "T"), but I also thought that being banned for typing "s***" was just plain ridiculous. It even got to the point that they banned two Germans because they were typing in German into the chat and the admin thought they might be using expletives.
I only bothered because I wanted to play that map online and no other Battle of Britain servers ever had any people on them. Everyone gravitated towards this one server for whatever reason, so they had a de-facto monopoly on that map. I even tried to run my own server for a couple of months but nobody would use it.
Before everyone here rattles on about how it's their server and it's their rules and all that other rot - yes, I'm fully aware of that. Go start your own server, you might say - I did that, and it just doesn't work that way. It was a lot easier and cheaper to just find a new way to log into their server and keep playing. I followed all the other rules except for the one about language.
The problem with banning Mibbit is that you are just inconveniencing some legitimate users while causing the malicious users to come up with a new solution - which they inevitably will, without fail, every time, just as I logged onto that server again and again and kept on playing.
I've gone ahead and banned the web client for now, as it has caused more problems than anything else. This is a result of a rash of people who don't know how to use IRC, haven't read our guidelines, and continue to defy them, even after having been spoken to by multiple operators, then having been kicked multiple times.
My sincerest apologies to anybody who legitimately uses the freenode web gateway, or anybody who just doesn't have a traditional client set up yet. If you need help with client setup, please ask here.
My sincerest apologies to anybody who legitimately uses the freenode web gateway, or anybody who just doesn't have a traditional client set up yet. If you need help with client setup, please ask here.
Mike Richardson
Banned
Banning the web client (with Mibbit also being banned) along with the nazi channel policies, pretty much removes any possibility I'll ever visit the channel again.
Mike Richardson
Banned
You are correct, I don't know. All I do know is that it's no longer convenient for me to visit on occasion, and therefore I won't. Losing a few visitors may very well be a fair tradeoff.
Mike Richardson
Banned
Because I'm not serious about the IRC. I don't visit any other channels at all, and have only visited #68kMLA twice using the web client.
A few years ago I wrote my own IRC client - and it's still not worth digging it up just to visit #68kMLA once a month.
As an update, we've changed the ban on the web client to a mute on the web client. If you need to join with the FreeNode web client, please send one of the channel operators a PM so we can add a ban exception for you.
Failing that, you can also get a telnet/ssh/web-telnet account on my server, tacgnol. It's a pretty modest system but there's no reason it would have any problems handling as many people from this community that wanted irc access via an :80-accessible telnet gateway, that they could use to gain screen/irssi or ircii access to the channel.
For more information, please join the channel and send a PM to Cory5412-*, um|* or Ulterior-Modem, techfury90 or defor* and we can either add a ban exception for your IP or host, or we can give you an account on tacgnol.
Failing that, you can also get a telnet/ssh/web-telnet account on my server, tacgnol. It's a pretty modest system but there's no reason it would have any problems handling as many people from this community that wanted irc access via an :80-accessible telnet gateway, that they could use to gain screen/irssi or ircii access to the channel.
For more information, please join the channel and send a PM to Cory5412-*, um|* or Ulterior-Modem, techfury90 or defor* and we can either add a ban exception for your IP or host, or we can give you an account on tacgnol.
Mike Richardson
Banned
Accessing IRC through an archaic telnet interface is hardly what I consider the ease of use brought forth by the web-based clients.
Christopher
Well-known member
At least it works. :
Mike Richardson
Banned
At least it works. :
I could hand-code an RTF file if I wanted to, but I think I'll use TextEdit and those nice WYSIWYG and GUI features pioneered in the 1980s.
