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Before Bridging to IRC

MilkManzJourDaddy edited this page Oct 27, 2018 · 3 revisions

Anyone running a Matrix room, it is highly recommend you fully control any IRC where you bridge, as ANY channel Operator could decimate your room in a single blow, kick-banning almost everyone, except maybe Admin's PL100. Maybe no big deal on IRC, but it could do long term damage to a Matrix community, even after you sever the bridge/link, and manually re-invite hundreds of users. Will they accept?

Anyone who gets IRC channel Operator status might have a grudge against or FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) reguarding Matrix. And Op's go rogue, or give Op's to an unvetted person. Hostile Takeovers of IRC channels do happen. Plan on this adversely effecting your Matrix Room and the Community.

It happens just with the monthly PIA-Freenode IRC Network purges of idle or infrequently connecting MXIDs. IF members rejoin, they certainly will be asking "WTF?!?!", and you will have to explain to every one of them.

And while all who get Op'S' (channel Operator Status) in the IRC chan' will automatically have Power Level 50 (Moderator) in your Matrix Room, you will have absolutely NO reciprocal power to moderate, or anything not assigned by an Op'/Founder, et cetera.

OPs Syncing

There is a concept called "Op's' Sync'ing" for IRC Channel Operator Status Synchronizing. It has been written to be on-sided in that those who get Op's' on IRC get PL50 (Power Level) on Matrix. But Matrix Mod's (Moderators) do not get Op's on IRC. This might be fine in a Portal Room, but NOT a Plumbed Room.

Ops Syncing in a Portal Room

Basically a Portal Room uses Matrix as an advanced IRC Client that included an IRC Bouncer. And Matrix users are joining an established IRC channel that the bridge found, or some user joined manually, whereas moderation and regulation of room "norm's" is done on IRC. So having the balance of power on IRC makes sense.

Ops Syncing in a Plumbed Room

The moment you manually bridge a Matrix room into IRC, you are opening up your community to a bunch of ever changing paradigms, for which you will probably be uninformed until after the fact. Every time the bridge reconnects, like it or not, everyone with Op's on IRC will be set to PL50 on Matrix. And others may have their PL manipulated for various reasons. The only one immune is a PL100. There are valid reasons for modifying room power levels from default, but now you lose control. One small example is to prevent a default PL50 from permanently setting E2EE, which may have unexpected results, including breaking bridging with IRC.

Joe Job Spam

There has been a massive flood of a so called "Joe Job" spam campaign from various IRC networks where the abuser changes their IRC nickname, ident'/username, and I.P. Address to avoid moderator banning. It is a difficult problem to solve.

Summary and Recommendation

Until such issues are resolved, and possibly the way briding works in Portal Rooms is distinguished between the way it works in Plumbed Rooms; Room Admin's might be better served by using Matterbridge and some sort of 'bot to forward moderation tasks to IRC or interpret them there, i.e the Rizon "Fantasy Commands a.k.a. BotServ Commands. Most of those are standard across various IRC networks and it is unfortunate that such were not included in a Matrix bridge written with Plumbed Rooms in mind. Unfortunately you lose individual presence with the Matterbridge approach, and would have to see a bunch of join/part events to even try to track who is in a room.

See Also

https://github.com/MilkManzJourDaddy/matrix-org/wiki/Glossary-of-Terms-in-Matrix#double-bridging

https://github.com/MilkManzJourDaddy/matrix-org/wiki/Glossary-of-Terms-in-Matrix#multi-network-bridging

https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-irc/wiki/Permissioning-in-Portal-vs-Plumbed-rooms