/LIST is part of the RFC for IRC. The behavior it is to display is pretty well defined and understood by IRC clients.
On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 12:49 AM, James Hess <mysidia@gmail.com> wrote:
Here's a thought:
I wonder about the scalability of /LIST on todays IRC networks which
have 5000+ channels at a time, it's so unreasonably large that it is
pretty impractical for a human to find anything in /list, unless they
apply some kind of filtering, after they just consumed heavy
resources just to download the full listing.
It's about as useful for legitimate uses as a flat '/who 0'....
Imagine if usenet had had a flat hierarchy like this.
Limiting /LIST to channels with 2+ members, doesn't filter all that
much, and limiting to larger channels perhaps makes /LIST even more
useless, since the person may be looking for a channel that happens to
have 9 members, instead of the 10 you might pick for /LIST filtering.
Perhaps the LIST command should go away entirely and be replaced with
a notice to check some URL for a HTTP-based search service.
(Not a HTTP port opened by ircd, but a standalone module -- some
service the server admin would be expected or anticipated to run as a
separate process, that would have only read-only access to online IRCD
data structures.)
Or with some sort of category-based listing system. Where /LIST
contents are approved by humans, so they meet some sort of basic
standard.
The average person isn't going to figure out /LIST advanced syntax,
they'll try (the hard way) to find anything useful in there.
So I would think it better to take away the inferior tool entirely and
provide a robust complete and superior replacement mechanism for
accomplishing
the goal of finding a channel.
Possibly have /LIST show a _small_ number of highly popular
channels that had to go through an extensive application process and
be human-approved.
_And_ a pointer to a web site for more detailed searches of channels
currently online.
Oh, and +p channels wouldn't be searchable in that manner.
On Wed, Apr 15, 2009 at 6:06 PM, Kobi Shmueli <kobi@dal.net> wrote:
> Adam Koeller wrote:
> They're not exactly the same but perhaps it's time to have cmode +p hide the
> channel completely from /list again (but still showing the channel on
> /whois).
> This will help channels who don't appreciate the random spambots that use
> /list to find them.
--
-J
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