Building Bridges

For the last few months, some of freenode's staff have been doing overtime as 'observers' on another IRC network for FOSS developers; hanging out in their staff channels, watching how they do things. At the same time, some of their staff have been watching how we work. It's been interesting.

It should come as no great surprise to most people to learn that the two groups are remarkably similar. We have the same goals, the same mindset, and common roots. We're moving in the same direction, of course we're taking similar paths! But it's nice to know that, to have it confirmed by months of observation and conversation, by sharing common problems (and common jokes).

Today we've moved on to phase 2 of this bridge-building exercise. Some of freenode's staff now have IRCop privileges on the other network, and some of their staff have IRCop privileges on freenode. We'll be trying to help each other's users just the same way that we'd help our own (a few procedural differences aside). I'm guessing it's going to be a challenge making sure we do things properly for each other, but there's no better way I can think of to move forward from here; to try to get us all onto not just similar paths, but the same path.

So, I'd like to welcome (and I'd like you to welcome) several new members of staff to freenode; cdlu, cryogen, Ganneff, hajvan, sarnold, scott, tjfontaine, and weasel, from OFTC. Be gentle with them :)