[Scheduled Maintenance] IRCD upgrade.

By now you've noticed that the freenode network was upgraded late this morning to hyperion-ircd release 1.0.1. Due to overwhelming problems with floodbots during the last few days, we've added an experimental feature to hyperion ircd and we'll be implementing it this afternoon.

In a few minutes, we'll be reconfiguring the network to prevent unregistered users from sending private messages. This is an experimental feature which can be turned on and off at will. In the short term, it should prevent private message flooding from spambots; in the long term, combined with changes to authentication, it could make such flooding very rare. Please email us at policy at freenode dot net and let us know what you think of the feature. You'll also be able to use

/stats p

to locate a staffer if you wish to comment, and staffers will be able to see your comments, whether or not you are registered and identified. Please take the opportunity to register your IRC nickname if you need the ability to send private messages. If you've already registered your nickname and have not set auto-identification on, please configure your client accordingly. Remember that the easiest way to auto-identify is to connect with your registered nick and specify your nickserv password as your server password.

Finally, we know this is a fairly major change to the operation of the freenode network. We're taking this step due to the unprecedented volume of spam in the last few days. We hope you'll take the time to email us at policy at freenode dot net to let us know how the change affects the usability of the network.

Thank you in advance for your help and your patience, and thank you for using freenode!