[IRCServices] Services Suggestion - NickServ

[Andrew Church]

>We have a number of users that come from Java clients. As is the nature of
>many java based IRC interfaces they have a "default" nickname and use an
>incrementing numerical suffix to maintain some form of unique nicknames.
[...]
>The problem comes when one of these visitors registers the nickname. E.g.
>JavaGuest. The next JavaGuest coming in with that name will get forcibly
>changed to Guestnnn by Nickserv.

     Since the user should have entered their nickname in the first place,
how is this a problem?

>NS now seems to correctly prevent the registration of it's own internal
>Guest names and there appears to be an appropriate flag to detect that a
>nick is "guested" so working from this base, I see two possible solutions:
>
>1) [Add a "don't touch" flag for nicks]
>
>2) [Allow extra "guest"-like nick prefixes]

     I'm not particularly fond of either of these ideas; 1), as you point
out, would require it to be set on every possible nick and would have
little use outside this one application, and 2), while more feasible in
terms of maintenance and coding, still would have a very limited range of
uses, and I try to avoid adding features like that.

     It occurs to me that a much easier solution would be to just Q:line
the appropriate nick pattern--that way you can force the users to pick
real nicknames without having to modify Services at all.  For example:
"Q::Please choose a nickname for yourself:JavaGuest*"

  --Andrew Church
    achurch at achurch.org | New address - please note.
    http://achurch.org/ | $B%a!<%k%"%I%l%9$,JQ$o$j$^$7$?!#(B