IRC/Cloaks
On Libera Chat, the network which hosts the Wikimedia IRC channels, an IRC hostmask cloak replaces the display of your IP address or host name with a cloak to show your affiliation to one of our projects. For example, alex@123.45.67.89 could become alex@wikimedia/AlexZ in several IRC-related messages (/who, /whois, and various join/part/quit notifications, depending on the client of the person seeing the notification). Many people make use of cloaks because an exposed IP can often be considered sensitive and private information. However, using a cloak will not securely hide your IP and users who are concerned about the visibility of their IP address should use a VPN or bouncer/VPS instead.
Purposes of a cloak
- Verification on IRC: The primary reason to use a cloak is to prove that you are the user on-wiki who you say you are on IRC. For example, jwales'
wikipedia/Jimbo-Walescloak shows that he is who he says he is, as you cannot add a fake cloak onto yourself. - Community pride: According to Rob Levin, the late founder of freenode, user cloaks are a way to show off your pride as a Wikimedian to those who see you in other IRC channels, and are intended to help build a sense of community.
People who administer Wikimedia cloaks
The following people are involved in communicating with Libera Chat staff about authorizing the use of a Wikimedia user cloak (the Wikimedia Group Contacts):
- Az1568 (talk) (IRC nick
Az1568orAlexZ) - Dungodung (talk) (IRC nick
dungodung) - Fox (talk) (IRC nick
foks) - Snowolf (talk) (IRC nick
Snowolf) - Matthewrb (talk) (IRC nick
matthewrbowker) - Stwalkerster (talk) (IRC nick
stwalkersterorstw) - AmandaNP (talk) (IRC nick
AmandaNP)
All cloaks must conform to the DNS hostname specification as described in RFC 1034 and RFC 1035. They may include upper- and lower-case Latin characters, Arabic numerals and dashes. They may not include spaces or underscores; hyphens should be used instead.
- As of February 2005, language codes in any Wikimedia cloak are no longer allowed. All cloaks will take the form of
project/Username. Name conflicts will be handled on a case-by-case basis.
- As of March 2006, contacts may set cloaks for Wikimedia projects other than Wikipedia. See the list below, and if your project isn't listed, speak to a contact.
Obtaining a cloak
Wikimedia cloaks can be requested by connecting to Libera and sending a private message via following command: /msg wmopbot cloak and following the instructions in the response given. After doing so, please wait for manual actioning by group contacts, which are done in batches. Please submit only ONE request. Submitting duplicates may cause your request to be rejected.
If you already have a @user cloak from Libera, you should still select "First cloak" in the application process. The option "Change cloak" is for people who already have a cloak from Wikimedia in our system.
If you do not have a Libera Chat account, you must set one up first.
As of 1 April 2024, all newly-registered Libera Chat accounts will have a @user cloak automatically applied.
Our project cloaks are only issued to users who meet the following criteria:
- User must have a verified e-mail address (throwaway/disposable emails are not acceptable)
- User must have at least 250 edits on Wikimedia projects
- User must have a Wikimedia project account registered for at least three months
- User must not be actively blocked from a project
The requirements are designed to prevent abuse of cloaks around Libera Chat. It is hoped that the vast majority of the time they won't prevent genuine contributors from getting cloaks. Wikimedia Foundation staff are automatically exempt from the requirements for edit count and account age.
Please note that you will only be contacted by a group contact if there are questions or issues regarding your request. You will otherwise not be notified directly.
You may, however, check the status of your cloak using wmopbot via the following command: /msg wmopbot cloakstatus – which will return one of the following:
- Pending - Request is submitted and needs to be vetted by a group contact
- Approved - Request was approved by a group contact and they will reach out to Libera Chat staff as soon as possible
- Cloaked - Request was submitted to Libera Chat staff and successfully cloaked
- Rejected - Request was rejected due to not meeting one of the requirements and/or by group contact and/or Libera Chat staff discretion
Activating your cloak
Once you get a cloak, you need to identify yourself to NickServ to activate it. It's a good idea to configure your client to automatically log you in when you connect by using SASL. Libera Chat has several guides on how to configure SASL in your IRC client. You can also identify to NickServ by typing /msg nickserv identify <your password>, or just put your NickServ password as your server password in your IRC client.
If you identify manually after connecting, there is normally a few seconds delay between identifying to NickServ and your cloak being set. This can result in the following:
[21:00] » Join: An_IRC_User (~User@11.22.33.44)
[21:00] × Quit: An_IRC_User (~User@11.22.33.44) (Changing host)
[21:00] » Join: An_IRC_User (~User@wikimedia/Example)
This usually happens because the IRC client has been configured to automatically join channels upon a successful connection to the server. SASL prevents this from happening as it identifies you to NickServ before anything else happens such as automatically joining a channel.
Cloak options
In the past, only Wikipedia cloaks have been offered; these cloaks took the form of wikipedia/Username (your cloak is made of your on-wiki username, not your IRC nickname). Users are now permitted to request a project specific cloak (but not a language-based cloak) using the normal system.
Cloaks may (depending on your preference):
- Have the first letter of your username be upper or lower case
- Be entirely in lower case
- Begin only with a letter and contain only DNS compliant characters a–z, A–Z, 0–9 and the hyphen (-)
Currently permitted cloaks include: