18-Year Anniversary of Our IRC Community
18 years ago we began having a presence in IRC. I spoke about this 3 years ago in June 2023 (video). Prior to that our communication/interaction/collaboration/correspondence was done over E-mail and blog comments (which are sub-par for proper, real-time coordination or co-editing).
Back then we used Freenode - like almost everyone else did in 2008 - but it wasn't until 2021 that we formed our own (independent) network for communications - something we had been dying to do for many years already (Freenode's crisis became the "perfect storm").
As noted some months ago, trolling and abuse in our IRC network is very rare these days. In 2023 we put our foot down and put an end to illegal abuse, which we had observed for quite some time.
Recently we had some "happy returns" or comebacks to IRC. We've not had to do mod/op actions this year because people generally behave well. A CoC is often used to cover up corruption, not to make people behave better (it helps protect those who misbehave). █