Letter to freenode - Post Mortem of May 25, 2021

Greetings freenode users,

As you are aware, over the last few weeks, we’ve been seeing an increasing amount of spam from other networks intending to mislead and influence long term running projects, namespaces and channels into moving to another new network which was formed parallel to freenode. While group contacts from the channels did not contact freenode staff directly, we were rather surprised when we received reports of unpleasant elements operating in the background and influencing these projects, namespaces and channels with false information in order to harm freenode’s administration and staff members’ images and paint a false narrative altogether.

In conjunction with yesterday’s events, in retrospect, we should have handled the action of closing down channels slightly differently. Originally, we posted a draft policy revision and solicited feedback in #freenode-policy-feedback. After several days, we discussed various feedback internally that was given.

The intent of doing this was not an attempt of a hostile takeover nor hijack like many people are saying. Since certain projects were disrupting their users' ability to chat on freenode via mass kicks, force closures, spam, we decided to enact this policy in those places which were deemed in violation and could cause an issue later.

We believe we should have done this in a much more communicative way to circulate the right message and keep things transparent which of course did not happen. As we move forward I’d like to fully assure you that we will be working in complete commitment to restore projects, namespaces and channels that were closed on accident as a part of this event and we welcome them to use freenode as before as their very own homebase.

Lastly, there are no excuses for this, and I’m willing to admit that I was wrong with yesterday’s move and apologize for the inconvenience that may have caused.

The freenode team is working in zeal to support everyone as much as we can and we sincerely request your support and cooperation to jointly move ahead positively.

Thank you for your support,

Andrew Lee (rasengan)

On behalf of freenode’s Administration & Volunteer Staff