[Unity-irc3] Banning from the entire network, part two

[Jan Krueger]

Hi everyone,
I've had a look at the mechanisms for globally banning people in Hybrid-7.
It's a lot like what I suggested earlier:

- Opers can do a temp kline which is a timed local ban
- Opers can do a remote temp kline on a specific remote server if they are
  allowed to
- If three opers /gline exactly the same host across the network, a global ban
  of a hard-coded duration will be set.


With the idea of a central blacklist server we can do quite the same, or even
something better:
The blacklist server maintains a list of bans, be it local or remote ones. It
also maintains a list of groups of servers. Every server is free to start a
new group, gaining moderation privileges for that specific group.
Now, other servers can join this group and the initial founder of the group
can optionally assign privileges to them. Some of these privileges may even be
assigned to a specific oper on a server.

Now a group is basically a unit of trust - all members of a group trust the
other members to a certain extent. Some of the group members have the right to
add bans to the group. If a new ban is added, every server in the group gets
notified about that. It's up to each server to decide whether it accepts the
ban - I'd suggest criteria like the group access level of the oper/server who
added the ban, how many people added this ban (yes, this obviously requires
some kind of counter) or even local configuration options to always allow
bans/kills from certain servers/opers regardless of their access level. And
perhaps others, but this would be the most important.
There might even be a local configuration option to have local opers confirm
remote bans/kills before they happen, for the more paranoid staff. ;)

Note that a server is not limited to a single group, however if it's in
several groups, I'm unsure yet whether it should pass on bans from one group
to another. I think it should. To be evaluated.

The advantage is that we don't limit the possibility for server admins to
decide what's going on - they can join whatever group they want, therefore
being able to choose between different flavours of global banning. They can
even decide to not join any group at all if they want Anet style.

List of suggested privileges for group members:

- add ban (different levels of power however, to give more freedom to server
  admins/opers to decide what bans to accept)
- remove ban (again, different levels of power)
- add short-timed emergency ban (only available to *very* trusted
  servers/opers... of course, this will make abuse easier but it might be
  helpful). The duration of those bans should get hardcoded into the blacklist
  server.
- Remote kill (different levels of power, you could have guessed :))

I hope I've made myself clear here. Suggestions, comments?

-- 
regards,
Jan Krüger
http://www.jast-dev.net.tc

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