Re: Matrix IRC bridge considered harmful

[Michael Catanzaro <mcatanzaro gnome org>]

On Wed, Feb 12, 2020 at 8:45 pm, Jan Alexander Steffens via 
desktop-devel-list <desktop-devel-list gnome org> wrote:
> We currently have loads of garbage IRC users in the channels after 
> the bridge hosted at matrix.org was replaced with one hosted at the 
> gnome.org homeserver. The old bridge left its Matrix users in the 
> rooms and the new bridge dutifully bridges them over to IRC. Maybe 
> they tried to contact one of these users.

This is another longstanding issue, but it's unrelated. The problem I'm 
complaining about occurs when people try to contact my actual IRC 
account, not any ghost account.

Yes, we have lots of fake users with [m] after their name, and that's 
another big problem, since PMs to them also go to nowhere. The problem 
there is simply that you can never log off once you join the IRC bridge 
(or, if such a way exists, it's so hard to discover that the GNOME 
community is not using it). So if you try the IRC bridge once just to 
see what it's like, you're forever left  with a ghost user account that 
people will send private messages to without realizing you can't read 
them (or even public messages, if your real account is offline).

The solution to both problems is to shut down the IRC bridge.

Michael