As we celebrate our 6 month anniversary of being in service today, I thought I would take a few minutes to update our users on what has been going on behind the scenes. Updates to the service bot and our custom ZNC software are continuing, and just today I have added the ability for users to remove their own accounts. This can be done in any of our official IRC channels by using the new !remove command. Please take note: this system can only be used once per user. The reason for this is to prevent abuse, such as someone who has been banned from channels on a particular IRC network, or even glined from the network itself, and repeatedly removing their account to get a new account and evade these bans. Also in the works is the ability for a user to add additional servers of the same IRC network to their serverlist without having to wait for staff to do this.
[Update - 2012/07/08]
I have added the !addserver command in the bot for our users to use in the IRC channels. This will only work with servers for the same IRC network, and any other network’s servers will be rejected.
On the topic of our official IRC channels, we expanded earlier this week (for those who didn’t notice) and officially opened our #EliteBNC channel on the FreeNode network. This brings us to 7 total networks where you can get assistance. We have also just taken over the main #bnc channel on Rizon and set up a relay there for requests. The former owner, BNC4U, has also just closed down like RDL did a short while ago. The Rizon staff came to us and asked if we wanted to take it over, so we did. We sincerely thank the Rizon staff for continuing to work with us, as we continue to work with them regularly. Also as far as network staffs, we now have better help on the ICQ network as 3 of our users are now staff or staff helpers there. Along with our continued working relationship with the staffs of GameSurge, Abjects and Infinity-IRC, we are continuing to stretch our ability to help our users.
To help out the EliteBNC staff, I have been working hard to add more automation into the service bot. This now includes auto-removal of accounts for any of the following: 1) unused via IRC client within 3 days of being accepted. 2) parking accounts/channel stuffers after 5 days. 3) users that repeatedly ‘ghost’ their BNC on the 3rd offense (if you are ghosting it, you are not using it and don’t need it). Other automation features for staff include the bot setting a temporary user ban (blockuser) from their BNC with the reason stated when the user tries to connect. This will be done if an account is g-lined/z:lined/otherwise banned from a network. The account will not be removed immediately, though, unless the staff come to the conclusion that this was a true abuse ban. Another new automation added is the bot will now check the IRC server the BNC is on against the server/network in the user’s information and alert the staff if they do not match. And last, but not least, is our new ‘Crawler’ that will connect to any new IRC network not in our current approved list, get any relevant info and relay it back to the staff. This will save us a lot of wasted time waiting to get information from staff on these networks. All of these automations are designed to allow the staff to concentrate mainly on assisting our users and the ever-increasing amount of requests we are getting. As we are now nearing 600 active users, I will continue to find ways to make sure we can assist them all in a timely manner.
Once again, I appreciate all the continued support from our users, the staff of many IRC networks, and many others along the way. I especially thank my fellow staff members for continuing to make the Elite name live up to its namesake. Here is to the next 6 months!
Comments are closed.