Question

I built a bot that monitors a couple channels on irc.freenode.com. However, after a while the bot is sent a 470 forward message and appears to be disconnected from the channels one by one.

:morgan.freenode.net 470 ircbot #linux ##linux :Forwarding to another channel

What is the correct way to handle this? Was I placed in this new channel because of inactivity? Should I rejoin the channel? Should I rejoin the server?

Answer 1

This is caused by mode +f – forward uninvited.

Essentially, this mode allows operators to forward non-excepted users to a secondary channel. Presumably this is intended behavior by the channel operators, although you could attempt to rejoin the primary channel – you would have to contact the channel operators with any channel-specific policy questions.

Excerpts from the Freenode documentation:

Channel forwards in bans

The suffix “$#channel” can be appended […] to cause a user to be forwarded to #channel. In this case, in all situations where the user would previously have been told they could not join, they will instead join the channel named in the ban mask and be sent a 470 numeric describing the forward.

When specified on a +i channel (invite-only), users who try to join the channel and are not in the invite-only exemption list (+I) are automatically sent to [the forwarding channel]. Clients receive a 470 numeric message which lists the original and the target channels. Clients will also be forwarded if +j is set and the join throttle is exceeded.

Supporting source