On Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 3:04 AM, Trevor Talbot <quension@mac.com> wrote: It's interesting this reference to "modern stateful clients". What 'modern stateful clients'? As far as I know, modern clients do not make assumptions that hostnames are static in a way that leads to any lasting issues with masking, can you show what the exceptions would be, what one or two specific major IRC clients?
Let's forget about modern stateful clients for a moment, and go back to basics: /ignore. You're suggesting a situation that will result in a user /ignoring someone in a channel, then having unwanted content from them suddenly show up with no indication as to the reason.
This is true even if they can only opt out of masking by reconnecting on a different port (or logging off, then back on). Toggling being available or not doesn't hurt or help the situation with /ignore. As long as masking is optional the opt-in can be used to evade ignore. There are probably no major IRC clients whatsoever that will fail to inspect the hostname in the prefix of a message when implementing the ignore function. It is not as if they will use an old version of the sender's host. If the target user was masked, and then switched to unmasked, yes, there are two times that /ignore may need to be used. Often ignore is based on nickname, it is rarer that hostname is used to create an ignore list entry, and it's well within the user's control to create additional ignore list entries if the subject somehow detects that they have been ignored and makes attempts to evade.
Based on what I've seen, hostmasking is considered an almost universally desired feature and is rarely *unused* on networks that offer it as an option. Why do you think it will only be used by a minority? Why do you imply that minority will have no effect on others in the same channels?
I don't think 'almost universally' is true... hostmasking is very commonly desired, however, and widely implemented. I believe 'toggling' or use of a user-mode to toggle it on, is among the most common methods of user control of masking, most implementations don't make it mandatory. What then makes you suppose pre-masking assumptions are significant?
And the question remains: what practical use does realtime hostmask toggling actually have?
People who don't use +i currently make up less than 0.3% of DALnet's userbase.
Yes, but did they when +i was first being implemented? Also, it's worth noting that +i (invisibility) wasn't made and hasn't been made mandatory, ever...
That isn't the only part of the tradeoff, as there are long-term disadvantages to making hostmasking optional at all.
The advantages can always be weighed in the long term... a mechanism could be provided for making it mandatory at a later date.
You believe that a minor reduction to disruption in the short term is worth the long-term problems of a complex implementation that is more open to abuse and unhappiness, even if the options that created that complexity are no longer significantly used?
No, i'm saying implementing something as optional at first does not not mean it's set in stone that masking is optional forever. Make it by default at a time, once users have had an opportunity to acclimate... measure the number of users who turn it off. When 98% of people are not disabling default masking, make it mandatory at that time.
My impression is that a great many users are already comfortable with hostmasking, since it has been available elsewhere for a long time and is apparently being considered here due to user demand. It is known to the
They may be familiar with the idea of hostmasking in general, but I expect there to be difficulities. There is no standard implementation of hostmasking, as a result, especially with non-static or "registered" masks, it may work in a way that users are not familiar with. -- -J