Epilogue
Signed-off-by: Christine Dodrill <me@christine.website>
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name: Epilogue
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date: 2021-05-26
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tags:
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- freenode
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- irc
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---
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# Epilogue
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The last caretaker's absence rippled throughout the halls. The darkness was all
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that remained.
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---
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I used to run an IRC network named PonyChat. It was an IRC network aimed at
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adult fans of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Looking back, working on that
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network was probably the biggest catalyst to my learning how to do system
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administration to the level I am at today.
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Lots of stuff goes wrong when you run an IRC network. PonyChat peaked at around
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500 users on average, but that didn't stop things from being interesting. There
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were several "groups" of people there, and a lot of roleplaying channels. As
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things like Discord picked up more and more users, a lot of the roleplaying
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channels were all that were left at the end. There were some people in the #geek
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room that were near permanent fixtures. Talking with those people and
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collaborating on various projects is how I learned the skills that I use daily
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for remote work.
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---
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The darkness was confused. It didn't expect this to happen. The discussion halls
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were so full of life before! There were so many people from as many backgrounds
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talking about anything you could imagine!
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But the people left. The darkness didn't totally see why this happened, but then
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they walked the halls and saw some things around the empty rooms.
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```
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The official Arch Linux support channels have moved to libera.chat, good luck!
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```
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The previous moderators of the discussion forum had apparently left up signs
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telling anyone who hadn't walked over with them to tell them where to go. The
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darkness looked around and saw more and more of those signs.
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_Without those signs, they won't know where to go! If we can remove all of those
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signs then maybe the people will be active again!_
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> This channel has moved to ##archlinux. The topic is in violation of freenode
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> policy.
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_Perfect_, the darkness thought to themselves. _They can't leave now, those
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signs were telling them where to go!_
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---
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When things came to an end with PonyChat, I had a big choice to make. There's
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two main ways for chat communities to die: fast and slow. The fast ways are
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quicker, less painful for users and potentially harsh for people that didn't get
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the memo in time. The slow way gets expensive and soul-draining.
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I was the last caretaker left on PonyChat after the attrition rate affected the
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staff as well as the users. I was the only person really active on the network
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and a lot of it was held together with increasingly brittle lua scripts.
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It was soul-crushing. PonyChat was close to my heart. Writing the bots that
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ended up being the core of the anti-spam engine were some of my first coding
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projects.
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---
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The darkness was disturbed from their laurels by one of their caretakers.
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Apparently this angered the people who had left. The former community scribes
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were furious. The last caretakers had never done such a thing. Notices to those
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communities were always left intact. The mere _thought_ of doing such a thing
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was _unthinkable_.
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Yet it happened. The darkness realized that they messed up. Quickly, a change
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was made. _It can't be against policy if there's a policy allowing it!
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Historical precedent be damned, this is advertisement! They are promoting
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another place instead of here! Here is perfectly good!_ They thought.
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The darkness smiled its spiral smile and spread to take down more signs with a
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golem purpose made to print off new signs.
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> This channel has moved to ##botters. The topic is in violation of freenode
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> policy.
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The golem blindly continued manufacturing out new signs. The silent masses left
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behind watched in horror as they were forced out of their former haunts.
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---
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There's something kind of magical about writing an IRC chatbot. It's one of the
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few kinds of things you can create that you create in public. Even if the source
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code isn't shared you still need to test it somewhere. You build it in public.
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Anti-spam bots are a similar kind of thing. Unfortunately they form a kind of
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arms race. It's much easier to make new spam than it is to come up with patterns
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for existing spam. Writing one is soul-crushing. You have to quickly develop a
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kind of reputation system or you will immediately turn it into a way to ban your
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own users. A lot of the more clever trolls tricked users into typing the phrases
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that got them banned.
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Then there was the doxxing and swatting.
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---
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The darkness walked through the halls and smiled. All those signs were gone.
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They peered into a room to see what was happening. They saw nothing. There
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weren't even the silent masses that had normally huddled around the backs of
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rooms. Some of those people had sat there for years doing nothing but listening.
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Nobody really knew if they were actually paying attention or not, some may not
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even be alive anymore, but they were haunting those rooms either way.
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The signs pointed people elsewhere. Those who had stayed in the background
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didn't get the memo. They were stuck there. Just sitting there and watching. Not
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really doing anything, just watching and listening.
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---
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If you run an IRC network of any appreciable scale, be prepared for these
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eventualities:
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Your real name, email address, facebook account link, twitter account link,
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phone number, parents names, mailing address, physical address and sometimes
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even tax identification numbers will be leaked to the public. You **MUST** use
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a password manager and two-factor auth everywhere. Register your domains under a
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past or fake address. That will prevent people from getting your mailing address
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as easily.
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I've been doxxed so many times that I have given up trying to keep my things
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separate. A lot of the places you see me using different names started out as my
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attempts to use separate handles in different places. I have kept them the same
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for consistency but I have largely given up trying to keep them separate. It is
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a lot of work and I bet that even if I went back on the hyper private sthick (if
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I even can at this point, I've been frontpaged on Orange Site and my blog gets
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so much traffic that it's probably impossible in practice without abandoning my
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handles and picking new ones).
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Your staff will lose interest and abandon the project one day without telling
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you. They may end up still being connected there, but just as an idle bouncer.
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It's akin to a zombie laying in the background.
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Call your local police non-emergency number and set up a standing order to call
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you before they send in a SWAT team to your house. There are people that will
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seriously call the cops and claim you're armed and dangerous to get a SWAT team
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to ruin your life or potentially get you killed. This is not a joke. It's nearly
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happened to me thrice. I got that call from the cops once. It is not a good
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feeling.
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You need to use something with a powerful and easy to use spambot or message
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filtering built into the server itself. This will save your ass some day.
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---
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The former moderators of the rooms that were closed off came back with
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pitchforks and torches. They were **pissed**. The rooms they had tended to for
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years were suddenly stolen from them. Yes, they were abandoned, but the
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precedent for doing such a thing had never really existed before. It was such a
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tiny thing, but they had to go out of their way to make that golem. They had to
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tell the golem what to do. They had to send out that golem.
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Several groups were on the fence with regards of what to do, but that golem made
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the choice for them. Some groups even wanted _to stay at the same meeting house_
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but the golem came in and closed their hall without warning.
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---
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The day I killed PonyChat was a hard day for me. I had planned it 3 months ago.
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Warnings were issued. I helped bigger communities move elsewhere. Everything was
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spinning down.
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Then the time came and I ran the script that only needed to be run once:
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```
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$ ./scripts/kill_ponychat.sh
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```
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A progress bar appeared and with it all of what was created over the last decade
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was destroyed. Backups were erased. Data was wiped. Servers were destroyed. DNS
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records were altered. And finally it printed this:
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```
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It's okay to cry.
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```
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And that was the end of it.
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---
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If the halls were empty before, they were desolate now. Everything was being
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abandoned in real time. Announcements were made about how the golem was
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premature and that people should really consider staying. It was no use. The
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golem had made up their minds.
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The rot started.
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---
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Author's Note: I really hope this is the last entry in this little speculative
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fiction/postmortem/retrospective series. I have an article in the pipeline on
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how I'm creating virtual machines from templates so that I can test how various
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versions of various distros work, but this freenode bullshit has eaten up a lot
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of my thinking time. It's been like watching a train wreck. You can't look at
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it, but you can't look away either. It's so hard to watch yet you just can't
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help but watch it.
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It hurts.
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This was not on my bingo card for 2021.
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