Dear Arduino team,

We are collectively writing you this open letter to ask your help in gaining moderation access to the #arduino channel on irc.freenode.net.  We would also like you to consider making this channel the official IRC channel for the Arduino Project.

#arduino is currently supported by a dedicated group of people who strive to be a friendly and helpful part of the community you built.

Why #arduino on freenode?  Freenode provides discussion facilities for Open Source communities.  When looking for official support, many familiar with Open Source projects, go to freenode's IRC network first.

Each day, the number of channel users continues to grow.  It is now common to have more than 300 concurrent users asking detailed questions, seeking advice, and chatting about various Arduino projects.  In fact, most users already believe #arduino to be the official channel.

To this day, the channel has only a small number of issues related to trolling.  Unfortunately that small number grows along with the friendly user base.  These types of disruptions can potentially lead new members to have a negative opinion of Arduino. :(

If the Arduino team does not wish to make this the official channel, we understand and  would like to then ask help in setting up a team of responsible regular members to operate and moderate the channel, when necessary.

Since #arduino is registered to an Arduino team member, we ask you to consider these first steps:
Addition of Freenode Staff to Channel Ops List
This ensures that no matter what, should any issues arise, users may go to freenode's support channel and request help.
Secure the Channel
Several options, which are not appropriate to discuss in an open letter, need to be set and can only be done so by a channel operator.
The implementation a small team of operators
All of the Arduino Team
A number of regular channel users drawn from nominations in channel.
This model would be similar to moderators in the Arduino Forums

Please contact us by email or through the channel to move forward.

We've also spoken to freenode staff about our situation. Their advice was to file documentation explaining our intentions to freenode (which we have done), who intend to get in touch with the arduino team with an explanation of what exactly the Arduino team needs to do to express their intentions towards the network.

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.

Thank you for all you do.  We eagerly await your response!

Thanks,
AbstractBeliefs,
Jeffers,
buZz,
PWillard,
TheBurrito,
CMiYC / JamesC4S ([email protected]),
Jarred,
And the rest of the #arduino channel at freenode!