Call for action: Rescue #lua (was Re: ANN: New IRC channel #lua-support)

[Fernando Paredes García <fernando@...>]

Dear Lua community,

Let me elaborate about this.

## Some background
I'm connected to the #lua channel for the last 5 years, actually got a lot of excellent support along my way learning Lua. It used to be an awesome IRC channel. Then suddenly a few people decided to "fill the vacuum" with off-topic (check the unofficial logs: http://mniip.com/irc/log/?channel=~lua). I reached #freenode staff because there is no OP doing moderation in #lua, they told me staff has not time to micromanage IRC channels and my only chance was to try to reach the other channel operators. Got to reach MachinShin who banned: onr, one of the worst trolls that #lua had ever. Unfortunately some vacuum filler (not all of them) disagreed with MachinShin and started to troll me.

## How lua-support born
I reached #freenode staff again, but they told me that they can't override the operators, and that last 2 options were: 1) reach ventonegro, the founder of the channel, 2) fork and create my very own (which I did already). It looks like ventonegro has not connected for a long time so pick option 2.

The #lua IRC channel means a lot to me, so it was so nasty for me to leave the it, anyway... it is legit to leave and fork, so announcement #lua-support to the lua-l and added info about it to the wiki: http://lua-users.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?action=history&id=IrcChannel

## Reactions from #lua
What happened next is that *apparently* Marc Balmer, this very well known and respectable person:
http://lua-users.org/wiki/MarcBalmer
https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/speaker/marc_balmer/

Yes, it looks like the same person that is mentioned here: http://www.lua.org/thanks.html

Well... mbalmer joined #lua-support to monitor and to say "hello":

[11:20:11] --> mbalmer (~mbalmer@46.175.8.71) has joined #lua-support
[14:40:29] <mbalmer> develCuy, let the things develop a bit..
[15:05:58] <mbalmer> develCuy, you are full of shit, I think.
[15:06:01] <-- mbalmer (~mbalmer@46.175.8.71) has left #lua-support ("Leaving...")

And that same person with IP 46.175.8.xxx is the one that was part of the vandalism in the wiki: http://lua-users.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?action=history&id=IrcChannel (Hopefully others decided to add improvements and the current version looks quite better now)

## The question is...
How does it happened? How amazing people like mbalmer (and others that worth mention) can go wild and make this? Did they forgot about the basic principles of FOSS & netiquette and decided to troll me? I would like to think that mbalmer got his IRC account hacked by some troll or he was just drunk, but checking the logs his behaviour continued for several days! And not only him, you will find high profile nicknames trolling and citing my nickname: develCuy and #lua-support, for several days: http://mniip.com/irc/log/?channel=~lua (check from Jul 27 to Ago 7 and forward)

## Call for action to ventonegro
Ventonegro is the founder of #lua, he has the last word on defining the policies there since he is the founder. Whatever happened to #lua, I hope that the Lua community fix this, because I'm not the first nor the last victim of this bulling behaviour, and you should notice that there are actual kids (~8 years old!) joining #lua from the game boards, watching and learning from the old ones, unfortunately some are not a good example IMHO.

Sincerely,

--
Fernando Paredes García

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=develcuy

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From: John Belmonte <john <at> neggie.net>
Subject: Re: ANN: New IRC channel #lua-support
Newsgroups: gmane.comp.lang.lua.general
Date: 2014-08-05 05:08:45 GMT (2 days, 22 hours and 37 minutes ago)

To the parties attempting to settle a dispute by continuously overwriting each other's edits on the IrcChannel wiki page:  please stop.

My suggestion is to choose an arbitrator, present your case (e.g. on the mailing list), and accept the outcome with some dignity.

--John