New/Upcoming features on freenode

[Robert Wall]

Howdy,

Since not all of us follow http://blog.freenode.net/ religiously, I figured
I should point out that a few new freenode features have been introduced
recently (read: recently enough that we haven't really discussed them in
the IRC Team) or are in testing right now:

=== $j extban (enabled now) ===

https://blog.freenode.net/2014/06/new-extban-j/ : freenode now has a $j
extban (extended ban, meaning "a ban by something more complicated than a
hostmask"), which will ban users from a channel if they are also banned
from some other channel. To illustrate, here's a possible use case (which I
welcome discussion about, since I'm considering asking for its
implementation in core channels):

/mode #ubuntu-namespace-bans +bb *!*@unaffiliated/flagranttroll
$a:spammerperson
/mode #ubuntu +b $j:#ubuntu-namespace-bans
/mode #ubuntu-offtopic +b $j:#ubuntu-namespace-bans
etc.

would allow us to add bans that should apply namespace-wide (in accordance
with the namespace ban policy) in one place (and only track them once, and
only need to remove them once if need be) and have them automatically
immediately prevent joins from namespace-banned people anywhere in the core
channels.

This feature could also be useful for, say, people with broken connections
that need ban-forwarding to ##fix_your_connection (/mode
#ubuntu-fix-your-connection +b *!*@ubuntu/member/rww, /mode #ubuntu +b
$j:#ubuntu-fix-your-connection$##fix_your_connection), and probably other
use cases I'm not thinking of. Any implementation of this would need
careful consideration of who has access to add bans in the $j target, and
careful consideration of the criteria for adding such bans. For starters,
I'd recommend mandating use of @comment for them.

=== User-enabled sendpass (enabled now) ===

https://blog.freenode.net/2014/10/user-enabled-sendpass/ : Allows users to
reset passwords by themselves. This shouldn't directly affect us, but is
good to know in case someone asks in e.g. #ubuntu how to do that.

=== Upcoming services changes: SASL DH-BLOWFISH dropped ===

https://blog.freenode.net/2014/11/atheme-7-2-and-freenode/ : Again, not
directly relevant to us, but you might want to check your SASL
configuration, and users might ask about it.

=== Upcoming services changes: New exttargets ===

Also https://blog.freenode.net/2014/11/atheme-7-2-and-freenode/ : freenode
testnet is currently testing a couple of new exttargets. Exttargets are
things that can be added to ChanServ access control lists (the things we
use to e.g. specify who has op access in channels) to assign flags to a
group of users. The two new exttargets are:

* $registered to grant flags to all people who are identified to NickServ:
I don't see a use-case for this in #ubuntu-*, personally, but suggestions
welcome :)

* $chanacs to grant flags to people who have flags in another channel: this
could be useful to e.g. automatically give #ubuntu ops access in #ubuntu+1
(currently, those two channels have the same ACLs because of manual
syncing).

For information on connecting to freenode testnet to try out changes that
aren't live yet, see https://freenode.net/seven.shtml

-- 
Robert Wall <robert at rww.name>
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