Freenode sucks

"&#60;bramm&#62; and I hope you realize that you just completely pissed off one of the most well known and respected people in the whole open source community"<p>Funny thing about respect, is it takes a while to build up and can be lost in a heartbeat.<p>edit: what's interesting is how respectful the freenode admin was throughout this whole transcript. If anything, kudos to freenode.

For future reference, a good way to handle this would be:<p>"The #bittorrent channel on Freenode has been getting trolled hard lately and I no longer have access to it due to the following policies that I think suck: &#60;insert policies&#62;. After talking to a Freenode support member, they refuse to budge on these so I have moved #bittorrent to irc.bittorrent.com, please join us there!"<p>Wrong way to handle it:<p>Paste the transcript of you smacking a Freenode volunteer around with your 10 foot long e-peen.

So, I'm not "one of the most well known and respected people in the whole open source community" and I'm not as socially inept as Bram, but I, too, had some issues getting things done on FreeNode, and I sympathize with his frustration.<p>The #webmin channel had been claimed by someone unrelated to the project, and who we had no prior contact with; it wasn't a hostile thing, but they hadn't logged in for months, weren't dealing with trolls and had opened access to the topic to everyone (so the topic was being abused for all sorts of ridiculous stuff). We were unable to contact the person directly, so I tried taking over ownership of the channel through the official means. After a year of just waiting (because I'd been warned it was a <i>very</i> slow process, and I don't spend a lot of time in IRC these days), I chimed in on the operators channel, and spoke with a couple of folks. All were nice, friendly folks, but weren't able or willing to do anything about solving our problems with the channel. I believe in the end I was told that our application would be brought to the front of the queue because of the ongoing problems, and how long we'd been waiting. I don't know what, if anything, happened with that; it was at least 8 months ago. I never heard anything about it, anyway, and the last time I logged in, I don't think we had ops on #webmin.<p>So, Bram is a bit of a douche. This is pretty well-known; anyone that has ever met him or interacted with him knows that socially he is inept (and Asperger's gets bandied about as the reason, though I don't think that really accounts for lack of online social graces). I look past it because intellectually he's brilliant, and ethically he seems solid, so two out of three aint bad; in short, he means well, but he can be mean about it. Even in terms of helping people, within the limits of his social graces, he is generous with his time in helping folks use and understand his code. We all have our flaws, and the FreeNode processes and policies and lack of staff to deal appropriately with those process and policies can frustrate someone with the patience of Job. Bram definitely does not have the patience of Job.<p>So, to sum up: A 60 day expiry on accounts is idiotic. The official channel registration process, while well-meaning, is baroque and seems to leave a lot of channels in a lurch of having no operator or an abusive operator for months or years. Bram is kind of an asshole. But we still like FreeNode and we still like Bram.

I'm particularly fond of this exchange in the comments:<p>3ricj: It's still just a damn IRC nick. register a new one and ask an channel op to give you rights to the channel. Problem solved. Don't abuse volunteer support people due to inflated self-importance. It's tacky.<p>Bram: If you'd spent the two minutes necessary to read the conversation you'd know there is no fucking channel op, because I was the only one. Stop being an ass.<p>Unfortunately Bram, there is only one person being an ass...

I'd like to clarify a few points around my post.<p>The reason I posted the log verbatim, me being pissed off and all, is that I wanted to make very clear that I was accurately representing official freenode policy, and that requesting help through support leads nowhere. My gripe is with freenode policy, which is asinine, not with the particular person I spoke to, who was merely being useless and patronizing.<p>The reason I got pissed wasn't because of the nick loss, which I find mildly annoying, but because channel ops got blown away, causing me to have to deal with this bullshit instead of just giving ops to someone else.<p>Yes I can be blunt. If you value the superficial affectation of politeness over the essential point of what someone is saying, you can shove it. I don't appreciate people saying that I'm this way because of asperger's, it just causes other people to whine that they're being oppressed because they can't criticize me. The whole line of argument is stupid. People are free to criticize me for not being polite, and I'm free to respond that they're being petty and superficial.<p>The whole 'it's free so you can't complain' argument is bullshit. There are plenty of free things which are of negative value to society because they suck up or distract resources which could be working on a much better alternative. I've provided lots of support for free stuff myself, both via employees and directly, and never have I claimed that a problem won't be fixed because the person airing a legitimate gripe hasn't gone through arbitrary bureaucratic processes, or that the person complaining should implement it themselves because they're a programmer, or refused to acknowledge that some pain a user experienced through no fault of their own really was unfortunate. And I always prioritize up users who matter and problems which need immediate fixing. That's the way you run things if you actually care about providing a valuable service.

While I agree that he was being a complete jerk to the volunteer, there is some truth to this. Freenode has a policy of reserving the "main" channel namespace (only one hash like #bittorrent or #wikipedia) to officially registered groups. This process is carried out by filling out a long form and waiting for approval. Due to lack of volunteers willing and able to clear out the queue, it takes maybe half a year at minimum. It's nice that Freenode has a system for officially registering groups, but they really should not be actively enforcing rules relying on that if they have no plans to reliably process the gigantic queue.

I have to say Freenode came of rather well here. Bram... not so much. :P<p><i>&#60;bramm&#62; and I hope you realize that you just completely pissed off one of the most well known and respected people in the whole open source community</i><p>Sounds like he's possibly completely pissed off a large portion of the Open Source community :)

If you read the comments one reason FreeNode is in disarray is because Rob Levin who ran the site died in a bicycling accident a few years ago.<p>In fact the chaos and drama at FreeNode might be the real story here.<p><a href="http://bramcohen.livejournal.com/72298.html?thread=1000554#t1000554" rel="nofollow">http://bramcohen.livejournal.com/72298.html?thread=1000554#t...</a><p>Fragglet writes (in the comments):<p>"This shouldn't be surprising to anyone with any experience of Freenode. Freenode is a perfect example of how open source projects tend to acquire the personality of their founder. In the case of Freenode, that founder was Rob Levin, famous for his online begging over wallops and for being completely incompetent in general. Levin's incompetence, begging and dictatorial style where he branded everyone who disagreed with him a "troll" gradually alienated all the sensible and technically skilled people from the network staff until the only people left were his equally incompetent sycophantic underlings.<p>"When Levin died several years ago as a result of his own stupidity (riding a bike without a helmet), they took over. I haven't heard of mquin before but it looks like the cycle continues.<p>"Your best option is to close the Freenode channel and move to OFTC, the staff of which consist mostly of the sensible and technically skilled people who left Freenode."<p>Here are some links with more details,<p><a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/01/29/buy_a_piece_of_net/" rel="nofollow">http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/01/29/buy_a_piece_of_net/</a><p><a href="http://antisec.wordpress.com/2006/06/27/eyeballing-rob-levin/" rel="nofollow">http://antisec.wordpress.com/2006/06/27/eyeballing-rob-levin...</a>

Although I've only seen a part of a presumably actual conversation (haven't tried to confirm it using other sources) I do find the attitude shown by Bram Cohen to be something I would not have expected from 'one of the most well known and respected people in the whole open source community'. It actually saddens me to see an open source programming 'role model' of mine behave like a spoiled child<p>I do understand the frustration surrounding the policies, yet I also understand Freenode which is offering a free, gratis service. A more humble approach would probably have yielded a quicker result and IMHO was more appropriate.<p>ps: If Bram Cohen is not really happy with Freenode, he, as 'one of the most well known and respected people in the whole open source community' probably has other options to create a #bittorrent irc channel according his wishes.

A better title would have been 'Bram Cohen loses Freenode nick, complains' as generally articles here take the title from the link where possible and try not to editorialize when it isn't.<p>...but it would probably be better still if Internet drama was kept as far away from HN as possible.

I can't believe he thinks it's a good idea to post this conversation. Apparently he's not aware that several of his lines are straight parodies of the Bad Guy in popular entertainment.

Bram Cohen's Aspergers is well-publicized (<a href="http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_43/b4105046863317.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_43/b41050468...</a>) and essential context for anything you read about/by him.

6 months? That's pretty lame, and I'd be a bit peeved as well. Having to go through that entire process of re-registering, etc, just to get an account back and admin'ing that group? I'm glad this isn't a global policy on email addresses or website registrations!

The difference between being an asshole and an Aspie is clear; assholes are completely resistant to hearing about a better way to handle something, and Aspies, go "gee, that didn't occur to me, and I was just looking at it this way, but next time I'll try that." I know Bram pretty well, and when something doesn't work, he listens to his friend's suggestions and tries to add them to his social algorithm. Maybe he doesn't do this too publicly, but would you? In casual everyday life he never throws around status, when he meets people he doesn't say anything other than, "I'm a programmer" if asked. He really usually gets embarrassed by recognition and tries to downplay it. However, I think we've all behaved less than humbly when pushed to our boiling point. The trigger is frequently just the straw that breaks the camel's back, and we all can get pissy. It doesn't meet my high spiritual standards for myself when I lose my temper, but it happens. Jeff18 who posted an actually good suggestion on how to handle this situation, would be really good working with Aspies. That is exactly what they need, and what teachers spend most of their time doing with AS children, modeling different solutions. It was very helpful.

There is a lesson Bram needs to learn. If you wish to avoid being considered a 'douche' you have to better optimise your statements to undermine your oponent and remove their credibility. He could have posted a factual account of his unpleasant experiences with Freenode that included a sincere warning to any other organisers of official projects. Instead he overemphasised the importance of showing both sides of the story.<p>If you are going to be negative then it is important to do it well and do it ruthlessly. Don't try to be fair or direct. Play to the crowd and ruthlessly take the moral high ground or it will be taken from you, as is the case here. It is a little ironic but if Bram had been more of a Machiavellian 'meanie' then he would not have been been labeled a 'meanie'. Some of the posts here provide good advice on ways he could have done that.<p>It seems clear that Bram's misfortune warrants a warning for all potential users of the Freenode servers. Hopefully this is not missed due to Bram's neglect of political expediency.

Why not just do what Shaquille O'Neal did for Twitter?<p><a href="http://twitter.com/THE_REAL_SHAQ" rel="nofollow">http://twitter.com/THE_REAL_SHAQ</a><p>Look Bram, you can even yell in your nick too!<p><pre><code> /nick THE_REAL_BRAM /join #bittorrent /privmsg #bittorrent :Trolls, please stop. It's me, Bram.</code></pre>

If anything, this just goes to show the quality support you get from Freenode volunteer admins.<p>You act like a douche, you should be treated like a douche; "essential context" of suffering from Asperger syndrome or otherwise.

Taking a step back as an impartial observer,<p>(1) Sure, Freenode's policy can be improved, because a significant amt. of users think it is a bit stifling. The admins need to figure out how to engage the users.<p>(2) In this situation, there are solutions more optimal than douche-baggery. If he wanted his nick back, being nice increases his odds. Bram can use a class in negotations 101.<p>OK - Let's move on with our lives now, don't you need to prepare for the 3/3/2010 YC deadline? If you are bored - there are plenty of single founders looking for co-founder.

Asperger and 'being a meanie' can sometimes be confused. I know Bram's diagnosis isn't official but it seems obvious to most that meet him that's he's a little different.<p>Edit: Okay I just RTFA and Bram does seem very douchy. If I was the admin I would have handed his ass to him 1/4 of the way through the conversation when he threw his first insult.<p>And I would have invited him to make a stink in public ... just spell my name right.

Interesting.... <i>logs into Freenode</i> Yay! My nick is still registered. I don't think I've logged in for over a year.

There was a problem and someone not solving it - to many this is the douchery.<p>Jobsworth.<p>I would be honoured to have Bram Cohen ask me for some help and given his heroic efforts on behalf of the network I would go above and beyond.<p>Seems Bram just camly stated the facts and the sysop just kept replying rules trump all.<p>Ashbergers Mashbergers for IRC this is probably the most dainty little flame ever.<p>PS Bram Cohen rules teh internets