Forums General Discussion Changing mIRC's default VERSION reply.. illegal?

Agreed, a degree of automation is needed, just as checks exist on certain nick and/or usernames, realnames, channels joined, the version reply (or lack of one) can also be used to control access. While users will find these checks carry some weight of authority, it does little to establish trust.

For a user joining (or being asked to join) a help channel, trust can perhaps be established based on the channel itself and the helpers status there. (Sucky Tom Cruise voice) "Help me, help you", in this situation the user wants to know they have your full attention, is it too hard to ask them to //say $version (or //!say) or check their scripts version against what mIRC version it runs (despite the fact the script shouldn't be 'shipping' with a mirc.exe)?

Edit:

Sorry didn't preview before submission, I don't feel ParaBrat's post has added anything substantial to the argument, but anyway.

I think you were trying to point out that the whole psuedo conversation above would have 'failed' if the user didn't provide you a valid version reply. I'd like to point out that it would also have failed had the user, knowing their version reply, refused to provide that information to you. In one situation you have automatically discovered the information (which may or may not be true) and on the other the user may have provided the information (which may or not be true). If the user *wants* you to know the information, yet doesn't know it themselves, there are many more avenues that could be used to determine it.

It is a networks choice on who and what to allow on their network, it's the users choice to comply with the networks wishes, it's the users choice to change network. Again, looks like it's about choice to me.