Okay, this is a niche one. A bit of backstory, first.

HackSoc communicate via Slack and IRC, with the Freenode channel #hacksoc being linked to the #general channel on their Slack. This is an arrangement that mostly works well for IRC and Slack users alike, except for those who use both Slack and IRC. A message sent in Slack by ldm, and forwarded to IRC by hackbot might look something like this:

hackbot: <ldm> huh that's weird...

If by convenient chance ldm had a Freenode account by the same name, it would highlight them on IRC by the message that was just sent - by them! How mildly frustrating!

Nickless works by making sure that messages forwarded in the style shown above don't highlight the user if their nick is in the angled brackets - if ldm used Nickless, then the above message would look like the following on their IRC client:

hackbot: [me] huh that's weird...

Nickless is a Python module for ZNC. ZNC needs to be connected to the IRC channel you want to strip nicks from, and your client needs to be connected to ZNC. It is installed and loaded as normal modules are. There are no configuration options, but if your nick changes then you may wish to reload the module for Nickless to follow this change.