[IRCServices Coding] Mass memos

[Trevor Talbot]

On Wednesday, Aug 13, 2003, at 15:48 US/Pacific, M wrote:

> Trevor Talbot wrote:
>>>> This is not spam, and should probably be only accessible by either 
>>>> Services Admins or Services OPs.  The intention is to announce 
>>>> outages, important events, etc
>>>
>>> /os global <message>
>>
>> That doesn't cover people who aren't online at the time.
>
> Outages are generally transient. If they involve services, memoserv 
> would be just as useless as logon news and an /os global if they are 
> offline when a given user comes online. There are enough ways to warn 
> users of pre planned outages that will last some time including the 
> associated web site for the network.

I agree with you on the specific case of outages, but I was speaking 
for general usage.

>>>> Frankly, logonnews is useless, and most of my users and opers 
>>>> agree.  It scrolls off too fast.  Ideally, it shoudl have a delay 
>>>> to prevent it being lost in the system notices on connection.  
>>>> Maybe a 10 second delay beforee it flashes by, to give the user 
>>>> time to connect, etc, and then they might actually SEE it.
>>>
>>> That is hardly a services issue. The IRCd would be the place to add 
>>> false delays into the login process.
>>
>> Logonnews is not part of the ircd's login process.
>
> But since services uses the IRCd to issue it's messages, introduction 
> of delay's in the process is an IRCd issue, not a services one. If the 
> IRCd will not delay, services cannot.

Services issues the messages itself.  The only sense in which it uses 
the ircd is the same as for any other entity on the network: the ircd 
is a relay point.  Services' issuance of messages is not tied to any 
part of the ircd's login process, nor is it affected by any delays 
present there.

>>>> Most users I know don't tend to make a habit of readin gth ebacklog 
>>>> in their status windows when they connect to the network......
>>>
>>> Many users do not check memos on a regular basis either so 
>>> spammingvia memoserv would just fill their memo box and they are 
>>> still are not guaranteed to be read. They could also add you to 
>>> their ignore list so your message would not get through in any case.
>>
>> Memos generally have a much higher visibility than logonnews.
>
> Really? At logon, the notice of new memos is just as lost as logon 
> news.

Yes, but this a psychological issue, not a logical one.  Many people 
deal with large amounts of information, and so may notice the memo 
notification while unconsciously ignoring the login news (much like 
motds are ignored).  This is just speculation, of course.

Memo visibility is logically heightened by notification in other 
circumstances: nick changes, identification, etc.

> Client configuration has a huge effect on visibility of any 
> information presented to the user and is beyond the scope of both IRCd 
> and services. No solution for memo notification or logon news (or 
> indeed /os global) will defeat client configuration.

The best solution for this issue in general would be to have clients 
become "information managers", where they could do things such as 
deciding if the motd or logonnews has changed since last connect, 
providing alerts if necessary, and so on.  The ircd and services would 
need to provide standard formats for this information.  Unfortunately 
we're nowhere near the point where this would be useful, especially 
considering the motd format has been standard for a very long time, and 
clients haven't done much with it.

In the meantime, things such as mass memos are useful for a variety of 
reasons.

-- Quension