Dear arduino team,

[Goal]
We are collectively writing this letter to you, in hopes of you recognising the #arduino channel on freenode as official, and/or helping us have a couple of active people with the ability to manage the channel.

Freenode provides discussion facilities for Open Source communities.  When looking for official support, many familiar with Open Source Software and Hardware, visit channels on freenode's IRC network.

#arduino is a channel dedicated to discussing and supporting arduino in all its forms, and we strive to be a friendly and helpful part of the community.

[Attention | Current Status]
There are more than 320 concurrent users in the channel, giving it a fairly large audience. So far not much trouble has occured. For example, no one has noticed the topic for the channel is free to edit by anyone. Many people chat in the channel, and we help out many new people who have issues. We keep the 'trolling' to a minimum, but this practice is put at risk as the channel grows and without active people to help with authority or step in to resolve any situations.

[Need | What we would like]
What we're asking for isn't much, just for official recognition or just adding some of the responsible regulars of the channel to the ops list so it can be managed if the needs arise (with a minimal interference policy). It would also be cool if some of the arduino core team members hung out there too, but that is up to you.

The first steps we would like to look into are:
the addition of freenode staff to the channels ops list: this ensures that no matter what, should any issues arise, users may go to freenode's support channel and request help.
generally secure the channel, such as making the channel topic writable only by channel operators.
the implementation a small team of operators from both the arduino team, and a few regular channel users drawn from nominations in channel.

[Our Plans]
To move forward with these, we would await your approval, and ideally with an email, with which we could speak to the freenode staff with the view to setting up a freenode group registration, and adding any permissions for the channel (though this could be done through david_cuartielle, who currently holds founder permissions, however he hasnt been present in the channel to rectify the situation since previous discussions in which he was given these permissions).

We currently have held a small rally on twitter towards your account @arduinoteam that we hope can show you that we really do feel strongly for the channel and its future.

We are at an impasse without assistance from the team, and eagerly await your response!

Thanks,

Jeffers,
AbstractBeliefs,
<Any other sigs here>
And the rest of the #arduino channel at freenode!