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I noticed in the new 7.x beta's when a nick is taken and generates a number at the end of your nick.

Now to the point. There should be a feature to disable this from happening. Example I run a irc bot that is powered by mIRC/Delphi and I can find that as an annoyance.

If it's already been implemented. Please tell me where. XD

Last edited by Khaled; 29/05/10 03:59 PM.
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I think for most users this is a more friendly feature than what was implemented in previous versions.


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I'm not a fan of this feature either as it looks really odd with my specific nickname (I end up with "argv[0]24"). That said, I'm not sure a bug report is valid, but it would be nice to allow this feature to be disabled via toggle. Or perhaps if the algorithm simply added a number of "_"'s to the end of the nick would look better across nicknames.


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I've gotten banned a few times because of it myself.

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Hoopy frood
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What would you prefer mIRC to do in the case where your nicknames are all in use? Are you handling the nickname error yourself by using a script?

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Hoopy frood
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Why would you get banned for logging on with a usable nickname?

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I think adding "_" (or a bunch of them) as a suffix would be less obtrusive than random digits.

argv[0]_
argv[0]__
etc.

You generally won't need more than 2, so it's not taking up more characters than the 2 random digits algorithm.

Although personally I prefer the old behaviour where mIRC would pause the connection process and wait for you to pick a new nickname in the status window before moving on. That's the behaviour I'd rather have in that situation; it allows me to figure out exactly why my main and altnick are taken, and it sort of serves as a notice that something is wrong (my mnick and anick should not both be in use)-- but that's just me.


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I used _ in my first implementation of this feature, however a random number will almost always ensure that the first new nickname will be accepted, and that at most two characters will be needed, whereas with _ there is still a possibility that the nickname will be in use and it may require more than two characters. Since it's difficult to know how different servers will react to numerous nickname changes on logon, using a random number was deemed to be the safer and more reliable option.

The problem with halting logon if both your nicknames are in use is that your client will not log back on until you manually intervene, eg. if you are disconnected while away from mIRC, your client will never log back on. I don't know how common this situation is, however it was one of the considerations.

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how about giving the choice to the users in the options ? smile
between chrs or numbers smile


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Hoopy frood
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I've run into issues where it wouldn't finish the logon because of /nick popping up. I agree that it is annoying when that happens and you're not there. If anything, I'd say to pop that up and wait X seconds and if nothing is typed in, THEN use a random number or _'s just so that you are able to automatically get back on while still allowing it to halt. I do see valid reasons for wanting that to halt logon.

As far as being banned, I know that on Undernet, I set up our bot to automatically ban any nick with letters followed by 2 numbers. It does allow them to unban themselves and get on an exception list if they are real people, but it still bans them the first time they enter. The reason is because many bots on undernet come in with nicks like sara21 or laura25 or lisa18 or whatever (female name + age) and spam everyone with porn sites. This became bad enough that I had to add that code just to keep them out. I don't think it's as bad now, but real people aren't too badly affected by it and they are told how to remove the ban and get on an exceptions list, so it's easier just to leave it on. It may be that other channels and/or networks have also set up bans for the same kind of reasons.

I think either doing the short pause before changing the nick, or using _'s, or allow users to set up more than 2 nicks to use so they can add maybe 5 or even 10 different alternate nicks that way it's controlled by them.


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Hello,

My suggestion is nick $+ _ $+ $rand(A,Z) $+ $rand(A,Z)
Something like this, should prevent the problems reported above.

Regards

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I'd like to see it like this, although this would be a pretty big change...

You can define a list of nicknames for mIRC to try, and mIRC will try each one until one is available. If none are available, then there could be a box where you can control what happens:

"If none of the above nicknames are available, mIRC should:

[x] Append random digits
[x] Append underscores
[x] Put /nick in the editbox so you can try a different nickname"

And the list could be done with a simple listbox + add/remove buttons.

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I like hixxy's idea. It's more work because it is basically everyone's idea put into a single idea, but in so doing, it means that everyone will be happy. laugh


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I'd like the ability to list any number of alternative nicknames, after that I think mIRC should go straight to either <mnick><random2-digit> or <mnick>_<random2-digit>. The successive underscores thing only helps up to two underscores (IMO), in which case if you want that you could add <mnick>_ and <mnick>__ to your list of alternate nicks.

I don't see much need for the "/nick " option; it's still more convenient to manually change nick after connecting with an alternative/random nick than to enter a new nick and then wait to connect.

With Khaled trying to whittle down the excess options, I think this is one situation where new options can be avoided without any real inconvenience to anybody.


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Moar checkboxez! laugh laugh laugh laugh laugh laugh
But yeah, I'm actually in favor. grin


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Originally Posted By: Khaled
The problem with halting logon if both your nicknames are in use is that your client will not log back on until you manually intervene, eg. if you are disconnected while away from mIRC, your client will never log back on. I don't know how common this situation is, however it was one of the considerations.


Right; as strange as it may seem, I never considered this a "problem"-- this was always the behaviour I personally preferred. I want to halt logon if both my nicknames are in use, because as I mentioned, this usually means something is wrong (I'm either connected or someone is using my nicks). In either case continuing a connection with a nick I did not specify is problematic because it screws up my nickserv authentication and channel setups. Basically, this might seem like an extremely black and white attitude, but if I can't get on with the nicks I specified, I'd rather not be connected at all; I'm going to have to reconnect when my nick becomes available anyway.

The specific issue that ends up happening is the following: when I connect to a server without authenticating, my nick is missing certain privileges that messes with my channels-- namely channels that are +m disallow changing of your nickname if you're not authenticated (for whatever reason). This means that once I'm connected with a nickname set by mIRC I can't even change off of it unless I part the channel or reconnect entirely, which is extremely annoying. I usually end up reconnecting (when my ghost disappears, for instance), as /part messes with my channel order.

It would be useful to either allow users to disable this via option or-- as a fair compromise-- via script somehow. I'm not sure if there's any way to do this via script currently, but if there is, I wouldn't mind going that route... any way it can be disabled would save me a lot of frustration.

I know you're trying to remove options rather than have to add more, but a simple single checkbox for "[x] Choose nickname when in use" or something would be good. Simplifying options is something I always fight for, but IMO it's relatively unprecedented for mIRC to have functionality this basic without allowing any form of customization.


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The main reason for this change was to ensure that new users would always log on to a server, even if the nicknames they had chosen were in use, since new users would probably be confused by the "/nick" appearing in the editbox.

I am going to change my approach to this - I will remove the automatic numbering feature and will instead pop up a dialog telling the user that their chosen nicknames are in use and asking them to enter a new nickname. The dialog will have an "Always show this message" option, so you will be able to turn it off. If the dialog is disabled, mIRC will display "/nick" in the editbox as usual.

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grin Good idea.


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Originally Posted By: Khaled
Why would you get banned for logging on with a usable nickname?


A number of channel ban on nicks with numbers for a few reasons.

1.) To keep underage people out. Any nick ending with a number less than 18 (or sometimes 21) gets booted. (Not a great policy, but a number of channels DO use it.)

2.) The girly drones all have numbers attached to nicks. While it is very very VERY easy to make a proper regex and ban only drones this way, not everyone knows regex (or how to script properly). Instead they ban anyone with a nick ending in a number from 10 to 29.

3.) A few channels use it to prevent known flood patterns. While not so common today, there was a point in time that it was fairly common to see a bunch of drones with the same nick, but different numbers attached to the end. ie Drone65, Drone728, Drone 092 etc. A number of channels ban on nicks ending with numbers to deal with drones.

Now none of the three policies above are very "good" as they can be modified with scripts to cut false positives down to 0 (or very very close to it at any rate). However, since most people who use mirc don't know much about scripting, we're left with some poor choices to deal with the above problems.

So, that in a nutshell, is why people get banned for having numbers attached to their nick. smile


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Well you didn't have to do that drastic approach. It's a cool feature for the novices. Just a simple option in the options to disable that is all that was asked. Anyways I been using your product since 2002 and I still use it today. Just keep up the awesome work.

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