Automatically voice users connecting from web chat in a channel

[jwflory]

Summary

Add a supported and automated way to grant voice privileges to any user joining an IRC channel from the web chat client (possibly with ChanServ rules)

Background

In the #rit* and #fedora* communities, we countered high levels of spam by requiring NickServ authentication to speak in the channel; however, we also have a lot of newcomers who join using web chat or other gateway clients like Matrix/Riot and are not familiar with IRC or registering a NickServ account. We used a ChanServ rule to automatically grant voice to these users so they didn't have to figure out NickServ to chat (and also since it was highly unlikely for spammers to use a gateway service to massively spam).

However, now that Kiwi web chat does not assign a @gateway/* cloak, this prevents any web chat users from speaking in almost all of our channels without registering. Of course we can instruct people to register, but if they are connecting to IRC for the first time or are taking one of the classes at our university that introduces them to using IRC, it is a tedious step to register an account first before actually chatting in the channel.

Details

Specifically, we set up most of our channels in this way:

/mode +q $~a
/query ChanServ ACCESS #channel ADD *!*@gateway/* +V

Outcome

• Easier to on-board newcomers into IRC channels / communities
• Avoid loosening anti-spam measures which resolved 100% of our spam issues for 2+ years