IRC/Channel renaming

October 2005 channel renaming

In October 2005, a move was commenced to bring the various Wikimedia IRC channels in line with the current freenode naming convention. This means that, for instance, #fr.wikipedia was moved to #wikipedia-fr, and #mediation.wikipedia was moved to #wikipedia-mediation. This is because freenode wants to have the project/group name at the beginning of the channel names, rather than at the end like current Wikipedia/Wikimedia channel naming.

The channel access lists, ban lists and other settings were transferred to the new channel names and the impact on users was minimal.

Redirects/channel forwards were left in place at the old channel names for the moment, so that anyone who tries to join the old channel will instead be sent to the new channel name. This works in almost all IRC clients, although there are apparently a few minor issues in Irssi (like the channels being put out of order or something).

The following details are correct as at 1 September 2006:

Channels moved with redirects in place

The following channels have been shifted and have redirects turned on:

#de.wikipedia moved to #wikipedia-de
#fr.wikipedia moved to #wikipedia-fr
#bg.wikipedia moved to #wikipedia-bg
#da.wikipedia moved to #wikipedia-da - needs topic lock turned on
#ar.wikipedia moved to #wikipedia-ar
#es.wikipedia moved to #wikipedia-es - needs topic lock and entrymsg
#pl.wikipedia moved to #wikipedia-pl
#it.wikipedia moved to #wikipedia-it
#no.wikipedia moved to #wikipedia-no
#sv.wikipedia moved to #wikipedia-sv
#de.wikimedia moved to #wikimedia-de
#commons.wikimedia moved to #wikimedia-commons - needs topic lock
#pt.wikipedia moved to #wikipedia-pt
#pt.wikisource moved to #wikisource-pt
#en.wikipedia moved to #wikipedia-en
#balkan.wikipedia moved to #wikipedia-balkan
#ca.wikipedia moved to #wikipedia-ca
#fi.wikipedia moved to #wikipedia-fi

Channels moved without redirects in place

The following channels have been shifted to the new naming scheme, but without redirects at the old title:

#ru.wikipedia moved to #wikipedia-ru - invite only at old title; no forwarding
#ja.wikipedia moved to #wikipedia-ja - only a locked topic at the old title
#tr.wikipedia moved to #wikipedia-tr - notices only at old title
#ch.wikimedia moved to #wikimedia-ch - no notices or anything at old title
#ja.wikinews apparently moved to #wikinews-ja - nothing at old title
#nl.wikisource moved to #wikisource-nl - old welcome notices at old title

Channels yet to be moved

#hist.wikipedia - #wikipedia-hist is not registered
#geist.wikipedia - #wikipedia-geist is not registered
#is.wikipedia - #wikipedia-is is owned by avar, who also owns #is.wikipedia
#zh.wikipedia - #wikipedia-zh is owned by CyberBlue, last seen: 43 weeks ago
#vi.wikipedia - Inactive channel; #wikipedia-vi owned by Mark_Ryan
#ro.wikipedia - #wikipedia-ro is not registered
#sq.wikipedia - #wikipedia-sq is not registered
#bio.wikipedia - #wikipedia-bio is not registered
#als.wikipedia - #wikipedia-als is owned by Mark_Ryan
#de.wikibooks - #wikibooks-de is owned by DaBPunkt
#de.wikinews - #wikinews-de is owned by Mark_Ryan

Forthcoming naming scheme change

At the request of freenode all Wikimedia IRC channels will be moving to new names some time in the future, the change will be that a channel previously named #wikipedia-de will be moved to #wikipedia/de, #wikipedia-en-arbcom to #wikipedia/en/arbcom and so on.

But how far in the future? Is there a plan for the name change somewhere? A list of which chans have changed their names?

The reason is that freenode wishes to reserve names for projects, e.g. the project foo should hold jurisdiction over all #foo/* channels, our current naming scheme does not fit into this format.