Too wide IRC bans

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I'm not sure who to get this addressed with, but I have recently noticed in the #freenode channel that masspro was trying to get help about a #wrongplanet ban after they have apparently crashed. It appears they match *!*@*.cpe.net.cable.rogers.com which was set by Baxtir and that appears to be too wide of a ban. I don't know what is going on as I haven't been in #wrongplanet lately, but I have checked in there recently and there is a god awful lot of bans on the banlist. Quite a few wide ones too and I don't know if it is an out of control problem that freenode staff don't see to be handling. I also noticed eir isn't even in #wrongplanet for that matter, which is a staff bot that could have been helpful with removing spammers and clearing up any stale bans from clogging up the banlist.

BTW, I'm the admin on another irc network by the name MorphForest, which does have a webchat connection similar to freenode, and I do have anti-spam bots on it which I have worked a long time on. I have last tested them with the channel +f being triggered, and I think they should work in a worse event. They have many different filters I created based on certain patterns and spam phrases I have seen in different places including #freenode. I don't know what kind of help I could be, but a #wrongplanet on MorphForest could be created as a test channel.

Please read this, i'm quoting from a moderator in a similar thread:

As to the OP of the thread. The spammer has been using an open proxy to spam the channel, it hasn't been easy to contain it and the ops are doing their best to deal with it.

Another too wide IRC ban again, this time its *!*@*54.2* and morich ( [details redacted] ) was complaining about it in #freenode

Unfortunately, wide IP bans with CDIR ranges between /16 and /24 may be necessary to stop the spammers when other methods fail to solve the problem. It causes collateral damage but it's the only way. Open proxies are hard to block as he can move from one IP range to another.

If one of the regular users has issues connecting, they can PM one of the ops of the channel and they can set an exception on that user's IP so that it goes around being caught in the ban.