And probably also be blocked from Google indexing?

As discussed in the channel today :)

This just seems like common sense to me. It's not really an issue of knowing that irc is logged in general (by FBI reptile illuminati federal reserve unpaid interns), but simply that giving the logs the same membership requirement as downloading entries feels appropriate.

unexpected* public logging in general is frowned upon on irc, and at botb there's no clear indication that #botb is logged during ohbs.

imo either the indications should be clearer (like with a topic message or something), or logs should be locked down from the public eye somehow

(edit: "unexpected")

okay but what about public flogging during ohcs

ok, but why

because nosy people not involved don't need to know about goings-ons unless they're involved.

too many fucking nosy, voyeurist, pervs who think they need to know about everybody these days. fuck surveillance, scraping, and bots.

yeah, what b00daw said, more or less. it's not like you all don't already have botb accounts :P so by definition this restricts none of you, seems like an easy sell...

i'm not really for or against this idea but i don't understand the point of it or what it's going to accomplish, like the #botb irc chat is like public anyway? i mean it's not like battle of the bits is logging some personal message convo. if you're scared of people tracking you down or something, you should prob be wise not to put out personal stuff that you want no one else to know in the public chat in the first place anyway

and if you're worried about stalkers and ppl surveying the chat or whatever, i'm pretty sure they'll find a way to do it, it's already easy to just be hella idle in the botb chat and unnoticed (just check out the #botb userlist and count how many people have never talked and look at nicks you've never even seen before!), "logging" the chat or whatever. also, if you think banning will work, it's hella easy to just change nickidents and go somewhere else to get internet and connect to irc, it's not like you would be stopping that. besides it's a public channel and it's even linked at the top of the site

if it's going to pacify all your paranoias, then go for it lol because there's no real drawbacks but i think it's pretty pointless lol

a chat message is expected to be sent to only the people in the channel, and nobody else. it starts and ends there. you know exactly who will be seeing your message because you can see the nick list.

bit of recent irc history, there was quite a bit of drama over *the mere existence* of an inspircd module called m_invisible.so that allowed opers to receive messages sent to a channel without appearing on the channel's nick list. just as an example of how people feel about unexpected message delivery!

anyway, i'm fine with whatever solution, but i do think it's a bit uncomfortable for new users when they find out the channel is logged during OHCs for the whole internet to read and index whenever they want.

just because anybody can join the chat doesn't mean the things said there can be published on the internet. i've seen people banned from channels for *accidentally* having their irc logs on a public web server. you look at the big channels that do public logging, and they all have big announcements that make it clear to the chatters that they're chatting more permanently.

While we're on the subject of irc chat: does someone want to update the article in the Lyceum? (edit: thx goluigi!)

I'm not sure if the server, settings and clients mentioned are still ok; I use the chat link at the top of the screen. Someone who uses chat in another way plz verify if info is correct.... :)

@b00daw: no nosey bizniz!

I did add that the chat is public and logged during ohb btw.

interesting song.

@goluigi: when you grow up and have more things like family and a job and those things may be in danger by the wrong people seeing things that don't matter to them you may understand. i reiterate nosy trolls can suck a rotten bison cock dipped in death sauce.

do you think politicians and conglomerate figures really post anything personal on the internet without *gasp* encryption or using their own personal servers?

we're still living in an age of freedom and enjoyment. as aji says, what we post in our channel is for us, and i personally don't give a shit about what i say in that channel being spread in that channel or anywhere else.

however we're living in an age of deanonymization, scraping, profiling, and record-keeping about your personal information that is sold which may or may not reflect your actual personal life. i use my fiancee's computer all the time and i'm pretty sure i'm adding information to her record that is incorrect.

paranoia has nothing to do with protecting of personal freedoms and cautiousness in a new age. i'm pretty sure you weren't using the internet 15 years ago when little to none of this shit was going on.

privacy is passee is a statement for fatcats that currently understand that information is the new salt or new gold. you're either for us or against us.

Can't there also be a clearer message or something when an OHB starts that tells people that their messages are going to be logged? I mean, I know that there's "!log.start" and "!log.stop" when an OHB beghasts and voting ends, respectively, so maybe it should also be a little clear that their messages are being recorded within those times?

Something along the lines of WARNING: starting now, chats will be logged until the resluts period of the current OHB has ended (it doesn't have to be exactly this, but at least have something along these lines to clearly convey that the chat is indeed being logged). "!log.start" may raise flags for some BotBrs, but I'm pretty sure not everyone pays attention to most of the automata that the BotB bot spews out unless they're willingly seeking it (e.g. using !compo or !ohb to seek out the latest battles).

we all know they are logged. the issue is that the logs are accessible to those who do not have accounts. we should also be able to say whatever we want all the time without having to self-censor because we know that anything on the internet could be spidered by botnets selling to corporations/governments or the agencies themselves.

but b00daw, we DON'T all know they're logged, that's what started this in the first place. a botbr found out the channel was publically logged during OHBs, and a conversation started.

i am personally ok with either solution, but i don't think things should stay the way they are. chat is fundamentally different from a message board or mailing list. it's more transient and private, even if anybody can jump in at any time.

ban TMAnna!

Just for fun I could hide the votelogs too.

if you're concerned about governmental agencies surveying the #botb chats or whatever, they'll still find a way to do it even if this login to view botb ohc chats feature is implemented.

(i'm not saying this actually happens but even if it does, this feature won't curb that lol)

I'm surprised it took this long for someone to mention TMAnna

http://modarchive.org/extras/irc-stats/botb.php

And I feel very similarly to golgi's stance on the issue.

obviously it's about curbing bad habits rather than just laying down and taking it.

we know about tmanna and we haven't forgotten because we use !seen regularly.

if people want we could "ban" tmanna and then just script our own functions without the manner tmanna does it and ask m0d nicely to remove the botb irc-stats page.

All of these points make perfect sense. For a private channel, or personal channel. Which #botb is not and certainly not so by the advertising of the "chat" button at the top of the site.

wait, why has this turned into talk about banning tmanna and the #botb stats page? i don't support either of those.

the point is to restrict the logs from being google indexed, which wouldn't happen otherwise unless someone takes very specific additional effort. the idea isn't to provide some kind of ironclad security - just to make the logs a little less obviously open to the internet on the whole.

if you search someone's handle/artist name and you get a random ohb log in return (which can happen now), i don't see how that benefits anyone really...

imagine a club where meetings are open to anybody who wants to attend, and there are flyers around town and such advertising the meeting. but let's say they start to tape the meetings and put them on youtube without telling anybody. wouldn't you feel like your privacy has been invaded a little?

just because botb is public does not mean that the conversations should be permanent for the whole internet!

if i was filmed at a public place and it was uploaded on youtube, i would honestly not care at all. i'm not going to try to do sketchy things in a public place. it's a public place and you should be free to do what you want, you can't "invade privacy" in that sense because it's a public place

if i was filmed at my house and i didn't know about it and then someone uploaded it to youtube, then i would have a problem.

if you think you're going to get in trouble because someone's watching you, then go to private places to do those things, don't do sketchy things in public places (or do anything that you would think you would get in trouble for)

nobody's talking about doing sketchy things. let's reiterate the point of people don't need to know anything about you unless they're included or you tell them.

like i said, i'm not against the idea seeing how it won't affect anything in a negative way (like xterm said) but what i'm trying to say is that it's a useless idea that won't solve said problem, even if it was existent

if an issue was brought up then it may be a "problem" for someone. if a problem exists for someone else other than you then it still exists. you cannot deny something and then it goes away. a "useless" idea? be careful tagging adjectives to your peer's points of view that could be construed as derogatory or belittling.

seems that there's something you're not getting at... what do you truly desire out of your argument? what are you trying to lever?

THIS!

8==================D

i'd lever that.

It isn't past humans to make up problems. Hence the old adage of "making a mountain out of molehill."

Nothing bad happens if logs were to be "leaked" from a public place. Such as the following:
http://pastebin.com/1A0m73Ca
http://pastee.co/hCnQsU
http://pastee.co/36ytKS
http://pastee.co/wuzQRw
http://pastee.co/lXNBCn

i can understand ambivalence, and i can understand wanting logs made member-only, but i am impressed at the size of the group of people who are *against* locking the logs down somehow. what is to be gained by keeping logs public?

^^^^^^^^^^^^^

(edit: sorry, I didn't get the hint with ^^^^^^^^ that the thread is closed.. never had seen that before)

edit edit :D
if ip-addresses as shown at logging in/out of chat are not stored in the irc logs, it would be more anonymous. (as far as I could see it isn't logged?)

If we'd be really wanting more security, then you'd also have to look into ssh connections and such. Seeing the reason of existence for this website (a place for good fun, no commercial activities) I think taking your own measurements to stay incognito should suffice.

If you choose to be public and have all your data and accounts traceable (what I can understand for aspiring artists trying to reach their audience), then you should be more imago-aware overall anyway. Think twice about what you do on the internet anyway, it never forgets (even if it turns into long listings that are tl;dr, thanks xyz).

Oh, sorry, that's not what I meant, I was trying to agree emphatically with aji's prior post. I'm not the type to stifle discussion, so go ahead :) (also, if a thread is actually closed you won't be able to make new posts at all)

aji, while i might be the most vocal one here against the feature, i'm actually not against logs being hidden at all. i'm simply saying that hiding the logs would not solve anything at all if you believe there is a problem (hence, why i am not for them being hidden).

"if it's going to pacify all your paranoias, then go for it lol because there's no real drawbacks but i think it's pretty pointless lol "

If you can't see what the problem is, goluigi, obviously this solution is not about something that matters to you. For some of us it's pretty clear how this is a problem, and it does matter to us.


I think getting the IRC logs under membership is a good idea, and especially keeping them out of google searches. Put me down for a yes please on this feature.

Xyz, your post is at least very rude, and at most a violation of community privacy.

There is a huge difference between keeping a log and sharing it privately, and making it completely public. That is entirely what this thread is about, and your post is extremely disrespectful to this discussion, and also to our community, in my opinion.

Done enforce your opinion on the community through pirate acts like this.

It's funny how this (seemingly) never was an issue until now. It only became one when somebody who's not a BotB member threw a fit at the surprising realization that he's been logged by an IRC bot during every OHC, in a public chat. With all due respect, I think he deserves the wisdom that everything he says on IRC can and will be logged through many ways.

I also notice that most of the posters in favor of locking the logs to members only have joined several OHBs here and probably checked out the IRC log feature at least once and realized that these were publicly accessible to anybody. Makes me wonder why none of them requested the logs to be locked down to members before.

I fail to understand why this is a pressing issue now. This was never an issue before. Nobody spoke up about it. Nobody minded it, unless y'all were too shy to make this request. If anything, my vote goes to the happy cutie land of pre-March 17. 2015 where we don't need to lock down the irc logs to members only because we all know anything we say on IRC is logged (also so we behave ourselves like proper boys/girls on irc).

Anyway, I'm against this for mostly political reasons. I don't like paranoia and conspiracy thinking. It's toxic and infectious. I feel it turns non-issues into issues and creates drama out of nowhere. I would like to keep the logs available to public because I believe we shouldn't all be in the closet and ashamed of ourselves!

Also, rainwarrior, I liked Xyz sharing logs. I lost my pre-2013 logs in an unexpected computer meltdown. :( It was nice to read the old logs back and feel nostalgic about old times!

If you would like to share logs privately, that is fine.

However, if several members of the community raise concern over some issue, I will expect you not to take an action that directly makes this issue worse.

Discussion is perfectly OK. Sabotage is not.

i remember when i found out the logs existed and were public, and i felt a little violated. i didn't say anything because it was a long time ago and i was a noob and i thought "this is just the way things are here, it's not my place to complain. in fact it is my fault for not realizing they were public in the first place"

edit: there are many publically logged irc channels, but it's not a problem for them because the logging is obvious. for example, you get the following notification when you join #ubuntu on freenode:

22:55:24 -- PvNotice(ChanServ): Welcome to #ubuntu! Please read the channel topic. This channel is logged. Use of this channel implies acceptance of terms at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/IRC/TermsOfService

happy cutie land... *vomits uncontrollably into the sky raining randomly onto approximately 33.89% of botbrs*

"conspiracy"... that is a very broad and inconsiderate label that undermines real concerns that people may have.

"behaving"... as long as we are using moral judgment anything is allowed (within reason.)

we are not a part of an oppressive organization that supresses ideas and expression. battle of the bits is about competition, expression, and sharing of ideas. we are free to live and do as we please here (also within reason.)

it would be great if most people around the world could do as they please, say what they want, etc... we live in an age if we have botbrs from china, iran, america, australia, etc... if their logs were deanonymized that they could get into serious trouble... maybe for expressing political beliefs? maybe for being gay? maybe for having a religion? and botb may be a place where they can breathe, be themselves, and feel that the world cares.

there is no one true correct philosophy for every person on this planet. we are not one country, one age, one religion, one sexuality, one color, one experience, but a beautiful amalgamation of the whole in all of its differences.

hivemind is also toxic as it breeds only one correct method and supresses the rest.

I will never understand the logic of "you didn't notice this issue before, therefore it can't be a real issue." That means that no problems can ever be fixed, ever, because all problems are pre-existing by the time they're discovered.

xaser, i agree with what you said from a general scope, but i don't think it applies here because most people here already knew about the irc being logged during ohcs and now all of a sudden it's a big issue

it's not like we didn't know it was logged until now (if that was the case, i think you would have a valid point here)

what i'm trying to say is !this 8===========D

i'm 100% in support of making it more clear in #botb that the irc will be logged when an ohc starts (a message more clear than !log.start) and maybe with a different colour scheme so it's more noticeable for n00bs who don't know it.

i'm not really in support of the initial request because it does not solve said issue (if the issue even exists) (ie: it is will still be possible to find out what's going on in the channel even if this feature goes through).

if you're so paranoid of being logged and some crazy government organisation or whatever finding u and putting u in jail, don't talk during an ohc!

I've always disliked it. I was never, ever happy with it.

Just because I wasn't making a stink about it doesn't mean I didn't notice or care. I hadn't really thought about what could be done about it until xterm brought it up now.

(i did not see b00daw's latest comment earlier)

i agree with where you're going with this, that it might actually get people in unjust countries in trouble. but my position still stands that this specific idea may not solve what problem (which can be seen as a legitimate problem) you're talking about

(!disclaimer: the following may or may not be true) i think that those countries would probably be somehow keeping track of irc chats already? i don't think they would go the route of trying to spider battleofthebits when it seems easier just to spider the irc network itself especially since they may or may not know the existence of battleofthebits and it's more likely they know the existence of irc

I'll make an attempt to explain, goluigi. You keep using a slippery slope here to force a binary argument, and the whole issue is really about graduated privacy. It's not an on or off thing.

Just because someone could get access to information by signing up for the site doesn't make it equivalent for to that information being indexed and publicly searchable.

Public indexing means people who don't know this information exists can find it passively. If it's protected by a BotB membership, only someone who knows it exists would ever be able to find it. It's true that anyone could find it by signing up, but it excludes a vast majority who would never seek it. This is extremely different.

goluigi: if overreaching policy attempts to grab information from something or somewhere that it was not supposed to initially have without prior access it will have to explain itself in a court as to how or why it got the information. espionage and hacking is still illegal; no matter how many countries do it blanketly.

until the constitutions of all nations are irradicated we still have an expectation of privacy when we make our communications exclusive.

goluigi, please stop making straw men of everything. Very few people are concerned about governments or legal ramifications of their BotB activities. The common concern is people who know you: an employer, a mother, an enemy at school, etc.

By maintaining some level of privacy around the community, we create a healthier environment for conversation and collaboration.

https://www.google.com/search?q=site:battleofthebits.com+inurl:irclog+potato

this may be antequated, but does "robots.txt" matter anymore?

google respects robots.txt, as do many indexing engines. and the one-liner thing is as transient as irc, if not moreso. i don't think it's any worse than TMAnna's stats thing

TMAnna's stats are fairly innocuous.
1. They are only a tiny, somewhat randomly selected portion of content with no political or personal agenda biasing the selection.
2. Its content is not indexed by google, and yes this is controlled by a robots.txt at the top level.

rainwarrior i understand almost everything you've said (already), however most of your points don't relate to my argument.

my argument is blocking access of irc logs to members only would not solve said problems (i've said some variation of this five times )

#55099: "but my position still stands that this specific idea may not solve what problem"

#55096: "i'm not really in support of the initial request because it does not solve said issue (if the issue even exists) (ie: it is will still be possible to find out what's going on in the channel even if this feature goes through)."

#55077: "i'm simply saying that hiding the logs would not solve anything at all if you believe there is a problem (hence, why i am not for them being hidden)."

#55059: "like i said, i'm not against the idea seeing how it won't affect anything in a negative way (like xterm said) but what i'm trying to say is that it's a useless idea that won't solve said problem, even if it was existent"

#55030: "and if you're worried about stalkers and ppl surveying the chat or whatever, i'm pretty sure they'll find a way to do it"


sure maybe if you only made it readable to users with more than a certain amount of points but then you'd be blocking people who are legitimate users w/o enough points and just want to use the site legitimately (so this is also a bad idea as well)

the robots.txt is probably the best idea about this, blocking the logs from google indexing.

also any comments about a more clear disclaimer in irc are also good ideas.

(i'm not at all in favour of throwing out irc logs in general though, i like to see what happened in the chat during an ohc that i missed when i wasn't online!)

(also, while i'll admit my comment "if you're so paranoid of being logged and some crazy government organisation or whatever finding u and putting u in jail, don't talk during an ohc!" was a bit straw-man like, the underlying argument still stands that if you believe that someone is trying to keep tabs on your every action, then i would suggest not chatting during ohcs)

[sorry, i'll transfer everything here into the previous comment]

please don't repeat something you've already said when it's in writing; especially with a bump. it comes off that you have more to say than to share.

Have you ever had someone you don't like find something out about you that you thought was secret, and harass you with it? This is one of the problems, and semi-protected access does improve the problem.

Living every action online as if it can fall under scrutiny is not an easy solution. That kind of life is hard

.

Maybe you don't have problems with anybody in your life like this, in which case, congratulations. Lots of people come to communities like BotB to get away from these kinds of problems, and make friends among people who can't hurt them that way. Insisting that they live a totally public online life is simply cruel.

i'm all for at least blocking it in robots.txt.

goluigi, you are misrepresenting the problem. the problem isn't necessarily government agencies or oppressive governments, but future employers etc. -- people that are actually likely to use google to find out more about you and don't have the resources to do any more incriminating research. when they do that i'd rather they don't end up on the log page of a compo called POOP 2000

the world probably has a lot less *absolutely wants to know everything about you* and *has absolutely no interest in you* kind of people than *kind of would want to know more about you if the information is readily available to me through google* folks.

my post earlier in the thread was to question why this topic was brought up considering it never has been before

nonetheless it has its validity and i couldn't care if it was implemented or if it wasn't. honestly, since the only people who would normally care about irc logs and the like /are/ members here it doesn't harm anybody here who want to use the feature

my problem is less so "why" and more so "why not" at this point

+1 for required login

if not that, then at least robots.txt please :~)

First off, I'd like to apologize for letting this fester. Between work, SXSW and some dates I was left with no time or energy to do more than simply be aware of what's going on. My ultimate decision is pretty simple: It's cool when leveling up unlocks stuff! So level 4 is where it's at to view OHB logs.

That being said, I really liked Aji's potato link. BUT, Rainwarrior, I think that this article

would have been a much better example for your debate with golgi. At least the problem is sourced from humor golgi could most liekly relate to. I do not like hearing about people being terrorized, that shit is not cool, but some folks (such as myself) tried to take Miss Anita's work to heart to the point of being afraid to approach women in public for almost a year because as a white male I thought I had "rapist" tattooed on my forehead. Seriously, if anyone could ever explain to her how her choice of words and approach creates more enemies than allies I'd be amazed. At least now I can literally Roll On The Floor Laughing rotflcopter to a vid like this

.

...sheez that last paragraph was prolly unnecessary!

*hugs* jesus, man. you're a good person who deserves love and affection. don't think shit like that about yourself. you do things selflessly for others and only expect a good time in return.

do us all a favor and do some changes in your life and get out there.

you did "good" on botb by helping people feel more comfortable but doing good for yourself is first and foremost for others to be more comfortable around you.

Let's just say I had one of the most incredible weeks I can remember.

that's so great!!!!

leave us more often and fucking forget about this shit!!!

be happy being you. :)

Fom the article puke refers to: 'And so she returned to work at Hot or Not, which had been a popular site for rating strangers’ looks on the pre-social Internet and was reinventing itself as a dating app.'

Seriously, I don't get how someone who has been through shaming hell, is going to work at a business that makes money on shaming. Dating app my ass. It's all swiping left and right, shallow judgements have never prevailed as much before. I really really wished it had been prefail instead, dating with dinner is so much better, without a horde of strangers crushing self esteems and bloating egos for no reason other than the looks on a single (manipulated) picture.

Sorry, totally offtopic, yet it was an interesting article.

puke you rock mate

twitter hashtags are not the language i relate to! language i would relate to would be <marquee> spam 8==============D wow wtf everywhere what is this wow

while this was a very long and "festered" discussion (especially since i was actually neutral to the feature lol), i thought it was a pretty reasonable discussion and it wasn't really an argument so i don't think it was bad to me ; )

(i still stand by most of my points though)

http://ajitek.net/u/olol.html

Sorry to stir in this puddle of posts, but I just donloaded the final pack of an ohb (you don;t have to be logged in for that) and in that .zip the vote log and irc log can be found. Suggestion: remove them from the final pack or require to log in in order to obtain final pack?