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Archive for February, 2010

How did I end up here? Well it all started back in early 2006 when a couple of friends from Runescape asked me to join their chat room. At first I had no idea what they were on about or how else could I chat to them. After being harassed for about a week or so I downloaded Swiftswitch. After downloading the client I joined their channel. It was pretty quiet, only 4 friends in it, so I never stayed on Swiftswitch for long as I was still worried about using it.

About a month or so later they even stopped using it to chat so I almost gave up there and then. I went back to playing Runescape normally. I had always enjoyed levelling on Runescape but it seemed all my friends were into “Pest Control”(PC) and jumped worlds all the time. My home world was world 12 and I mainly stayed there but started to feel lost due to all my friends being so spread out doing PC, so I thought about it and decided to try it myself.

Where could I find out what world to go to? Ahh!! But realised I could probably use Swiftswitch. I joined a couple of pc channels and didn’t feel like I belonged so I never stayed for long, but during this time I made a couple of friends that decided to try and make their own pc channel. They asked me to help, me being me, I said Yes! and I helped them with this channel. At that time I didn’t know very much about SwiftIRC or many commands.

(I was going to keep this short and leave this next part out but then I realised that what happened next made a big difference to my time on IRC.)

While helping with this PC channel, I decided to register my first private channel (which I still have and use today). The PC channel didn’t last long so we gave up and joined ZPS. I helped with the ZPS channels until pc changed and most people gave up on the minigame.

My private saw a few friends join. It was fairly quiet but I still had this one problem of my two friends not getting on with each other. It somewhat sorted its self out when Terror_nisse stopped coming into my channel and I would chat to him in his channel instead. I never stayed in his channel for long as they didn’t speak much English in the channel.

Everything settled down and I continued to chat in about 4 channels with close friends. One day I had a question, I can’t remember what it was, but I was told to go and ask in #IRChelp. I had never encountered this channel before, but thought to myself “OK, off I go /join #irchelp omg!!”. When I joined the channel I couldn’t keep up as the lines of text were going quicker than I could read – “Eek!! Help” , so I waited for a bit to see if it calmed down but this never happened. I guess it took me about ½ hr to decide if I wanted to ask this question and if I was just going to have to speak up. So I asked my question, then I waited for a while. No one replied so I asked again. It seemed like about 20 people said to me ask Lilly as she is active and can help you. I am still struggling to follow anything in the channel but when this many people tell you to ask Lilly for the help what do you do –“Ahh!” So I PMed Lilly – What a big mistake. I was kb’ed from the channel for pm’ing her so I gave up and told myself I would never go back into #IRChelp again. I asked a friend from my channel to find out the answer to my question and I never went back.

After a while the another friend gave up on IRC, so Terror came back to chat in my channel and everything was going well. Terror had decided to make a stats bot because he had seen the one we used in the PC channel. I was still using Swiftswitch to chat and used mIRC for my bot, which was not a great bot but it helped in the PC channels if needed.

Terror_nisse had joined up with Xotick and Jeffreims to make Vectra. Terror asked if I would join #vectra channel so I did, I helped if someone asked a question. Soon after they asked me if I would like to help with the channel, which I agreed to and that is how I ended up as staff on Vectra.

Then in 2008 SwiftIRC opened applications for people to become a HelpOp. I had still never been back into #irchelp after the Lilly kb’ed meaAnd I was only ever in about 4 channels, but I would always help anyone that asked. People in #vectra started chatting about the applications and were all very excited by it, and then they all started asking if I had applied which at that time I said no (because I hadn’t considered it yet).

I thought to myself “why not I enjoy helping anyone” so I applied to be a helpop. It must have been just before they closed the applications. I never told anyone I had applied and ignored the question if anyone asked me.

This is when I decided to go back into #irchelp and watch to see what went on in there. I idled for a day or so and then I started to answer peoples questions. I started to enjoy being in the channel.

When I saw Awong’s post about what sort of answers they were expecting from some of the questions, I said to myself well that counts me out then. I was amazed when they posted the shortlist and there was my nickname. I couldn’t hide it anymore.

The application process went quite well for me and as you all know. I did progress and become a helpop which saw me starting to make new friends and the channels I was in started to grow I was no longer hiding myself away in 4 channels or only speaking to a dozen or so close friends. SwiftIRC and my friends on the network have helped me cope with some extremely difficult times in my life; I don’t think I would have coped with out all of the help and support they gave me. Now it is my turn to help others and give something back to the network.

Hi there!

Welcome to Home’s introduction essay?  Meh, it probably won’t be good enough to be considered that! Let’s just stick with Home’s Introduction Blog!

Anyways, I’m here to inform users how I came about to SwiftIRC, and beyond. Not many users besides current and some past staff know much about me. So, let’s get started shall we?!

I myself, like most of the users on SwiftIRC found out about the network from Jagex’s popular game called RuneScape. One day one of my friends on RuneScape was telling me about this client called ‘SwiftSwitch’ (Currently know has SwiftKit) which had a “World Switcher” on it that allowed you to switch worlds extremely fast. That got my attention, so I asked more about it. Upon downloading it I was amazed by the features it had! The highscore lookup was probably the most used feature for me after I installed the client. Always thought it gave me an advantage when doing my noobish mage arena pking with an IRL friend. (Apparently being on the phone with him at the same time wasn’t a big enough advantage)

Now, to how I came about the IRC world.

On April 16, 2006 Jagex released a new mini game called Pest Control. For us who remember the old Pest Control there were players on the docks advertising an IRC channel. Before seeing these channels advertised I knew pretty much  nothing about IRC. I did join #SwiftSwitch from time to time, but I had no idea there was other channels available to use! So, anyways I ended up joining a channel I saw advertised.

It was there in which I learned about mIRC and #IRChelp.It was then I first started helping in #IRChelp. Again, I hardly knew anything about the commands so I sit there and gathered commands to make aliases. I never got anywhere but temp voice during that time.

I ended up rising in ranks in the Pest Control channel among the staff there, at the end I was “head of staff”. The channel changed founders and merged to a channel called #pc, which was owned by a then HelpOp (Now IRCop) Pancakes. I started as Half-Op there, but was promoted to Op pretty quickly and was one of the longest running Operators until it died. The channel became one of the most popular Pest Control channel on SwiftIRC with over 1k users for its peak.

During #Pc’s prime I was busy with the tasks there and not able to help on a regular basis within #IRChelp. I still idled in there and helped randomly here and there. In doing so I then learned it wasn’t about the speed of helping the users, but the quality of the help.

We will skip some of the boring parts here. =]

#PC began to die down due to Jagex’s updates on Pest Control and the minigame became less popular. This gave me more time to help in #IRChelp.

Months after returning to help regularly I was chosen to be FoSho’s mentee and given voice access on September 17, 2007.After FoSho’s quizzes and tips I was promoted to Half-Op on October 18, 2007. (And it seems I even have the screenshots of it and of my first kb LOL!) Again, after more quizzes and tips from FoSho (Him being well younger than me was the odd part…) I was promoted to HelpOp on November 3,2007.

If I remember right I was the only one of his mentees that ever made it to HelpOp, and I was mentored by the youngest HelpOp. As of right now, I am also the longest running HelpOp that has not been demoted for inactivity.

Life behind the scenes as SwiftIRC staff has been very enjoyable. I’ve seen the best of staff, and the worst come and go.I’ve seen ideas that have been implemented and ideas that never came to pass.I’ve been hated by users, and respected by others.

I hope that I can continue to be part of the network for a awhile to come.

That’s all I have for my blogs for now. Check back later for more!

This was my first blog, so be nice! lol

Thanks for reading,

Home

There are many of you who know very little about me. I’m not one to be overly secretive, but due to time constraints with my work and my hectic schedule it is very difficult for me to actually enjoy IRC for what’s worth. I regrettably spend most of my time hiding in staff channels like #opers, #helpopers, #help, and #support. I’ve been on this network since late 2005 according to my logs on an older computer.

I’ll start with the beginning. I started off with SwiftIRC as a regular user. I was not very popular, and I only used #Pancakes, #Swiftswitch, and #Remy. I associated myself with DjinnWraith, Freightliner, TheGame, Awong, Pk_Myth0, Dj_Burton, Slushpuppy, Mithshark, and Remy. I’m sure there are others, but those are the ones that come to mind back in 2005/2006.

In 2006 I decided to make my appearance in #IrcHelp. Keep in mind, #irchelp did not have a bot back then (excluding Hbot, which was coded in PHP and assisted with basic questions when commanded to do so). For the most part, #irchelp was clean of alias spam.

I helped in #irchelp for a few months simply because I had a lot of spare time. I did not work and school wasn’t a priority for me. I was taken by surprise when Awong (a fellow helpoper back then) suddenly told me that I had access in #Irchelp. I’m inclined to believe that Tim was the one who added me to the access list, but I can’t be certain. Back then, there was no such thing as a regular user with access in #irchelp–You were either a help operator, or not on the access list. I was the exception, and I marked the beginning of the Help Operator Progression (voice>halfop>helpop)

I continued to help in #irchelp until I was promoted to a Help Operator, which did not take very long at all. From my memory, my fellow help operator team consisted of Awong, Steve (not Concept), DjinnWraith, Dj_Burton, TheGame, Marius, Pk_Myth0, Stirk, [-Stary-], Timmy, Rupert, Antafein, Flopster0, Lilly, Lily (yes, another one), Xklark, and R0b. I know for a fact there were a few more, but I can’t remember because it was such a long time ago (4 years ago).

I was a Help Operator for roughly one year or perhaps a little longer, and I was then promoted to an IRCop around June of ‘07. I’m not sure how this exactly happened, or the reasons behind it besides that I was active and I showed the qualities necessary to be an IRCop. I was given local on hyperion.swiftirc.net (katlyn’s server at the time) and a month later I received my global o:line.

I shared my IRCop reign with Scott, who at the time (and still is) was a noob. By the very end of 2007, I was extremely involved with my work that I rarely had any time to do anything on SwiftIRC besides akilling troublesome users and resolving botnet issues. Which isn’t very pleasant or fun, but I feel that I did my part to keep the network in safe-hands.

In 2008, I was still very involved with my work, so my involvement was minimum in terms of interacting with the community. The same applies for 2009 and 2010. To this day, I’m very involved with work and my life outside of IRC. SwiftIRC will always remain a priority though–I won’t ever be able to leave this network

And….*shrugs*….Here I am today. If you insist on learning more, or simply have a desire to get to know me better, you can get ahold of me in #help. Rest assured, I will reply if I’m online. I’m not one to intentionally avoid people (unless it involves a fork and maple syrup)

Since apparently this blog has now been commandeered and given a new purpose, I guess I may aswell do the same as the others and post a brief history of my time with SwiftIRC and IRC in general.

I’ve been with SwiftIRC since the around the beginning of 2006, over which time I’ve somehow managed to climb to the top of the ladder and gain the coveted position of network administrator. Although I’ve only been with the network for a relatively short period of time (helped by the fact that we’re a very young network still) I’ve been using IRC since the late 1990s, with most of my time having been spent on GamesNET (now known as GameSurge after their merger with PGPN in 2004).

I was very much just your average user on GamesNET/GameSurge for the majority of the time I was there. I spent my time in just a few channels and generally kept to my own business as a regular user of the network. In 2001, however, I helped form a ‘clan’ for a particular online java game which eventually ended up in me running a standalone IRC server for it, even after I had left, until its eventual demise – it should be noted that this clan did become one of the top clans in the game for a while, often ranked in the top three by other players. After this particular clan had died it branched off and the IRC server that had previously hosted the original clan now hosted the new ones and a few others. It wasn’t a large network by any means, and only really ever peaked at around 100 users. However, this was probably my first experience of actually administrating a network.

While all the above was happening I had also managed to secure myself a position on staff at GameSurge during 2005. By 2007 I had eventually reached the position of staff trainer, after which I decided to leave due to 1) A lack of time to be able to be of use to the network and 2) A possible conflict of interest between my position on SwiftIRC and on GameSurge (although according to the gamesurge admins they didn’t see this as an issue). The following is taken from my GameSurge profile, and provides an outline of my staff history with gamesurge:

2/12/05 – Applied for Staff
4/12/05 – Application accepted
4/12/05 – Passed interview & entered trial stage
10/1/06 – Promoted to Support helper
14/6/06 – Promoted to Network helper
31/1/07 – Promoted to Staff Trainer

The first real contact I had with SwiftIRC was rather strange – I had never really connected here before much, but knew the owner of the hosting company that the network rented two IRCd shells from at the time (the servers being hydra.fl and imperial.ca). He seemeed convinced, for some reason, that the network was harbouring a huge fleet of bots and I essentially connected to do some scouting/to be nosey. Obviously he didn’t find anything very interesting, and eventually he packed up his hosting company and ran off with his customers’ money never to be seen or heard from again (though it would appear he still hangs around a few car-related forums… I’ve never been too bothered to confront him though).

After this initial contact with the network I tended to just idle in the main network channel, making a few – probably sarcastic/witty and incredibly intelligent – remarks every so often, but never really used the network for its intended purpose (ie. to chat to other people). I should also mention that sometime after I had arrived on the network I helped migrate one of my friend’s (sony) stats bot to the network (`SonyBot, an eggdrop/TCL rs bot which pre-dated RuneScript by a longshot – according to spling it provided a lot of inspiration for runescript, though has now since been removed from their website – and was also originally from gamesnet/surge). Although it became fairly large, we didn’t put very much effort into it (we couldn’t be bothered with making the lame invite system that bots seemed to start using), so it was mainly used by those that appreciated the quality of it, rather than it being used by the masses of noobs. At its peak we had around 25 eggdrops online serving channels, but with the ever-increasing inactiveness of sony it was eventualy laid to rest. Anyway, I digress… back to when I had really only just joined the network…

It was during an outage of the services that I began to speak with scifi, who was the server administrator (and network administrator) for wholly at the time. While although I hadn’t spoken to him much at all, not long later (perhaps a few days?) he contacted me asking If I’d like to be a local operator on his server. I didn’t really know what to make of it at first – I was from gamesurge, where it takes an application, an interview, 30 days as a trial and then 6 months as a trainee before you’re even considered to become a full helper, equivalent to a help operator on here. And here I’d been offered an operator position after a couple of months and just a few encounters with a particularly strange network admin. Nevertheless, I accepted and was put to a vote by the network administrators. I can reliably inform you that of the grand total of four people who voted, two voted yes and the other two voted to abstain on the grounds that they didn’t know me…. actually, make that a total of five and three yes’s – I just voted yes for myself ;>.

To be honest there isn’t much to say about my duration as a local oper, or indeed as a global operator after my vote to remain as a staff member also passed (this time with 5/5 voting yes – clearly I made an impression, hardly surprising ). After about a month as a global oper I submitted a link application for a US server called ‘hyperion’. The application was accepted, I passed my trial link and became a network administrator (since back then those who successfully linked a server were given this position straight away). I take some pride in knowing that I 1) Was never a helpoper… ever (thank god) and 2) Gained a position on staff without having to link a server in the process. I eventually delinked Hyperion after almost a year, knowing that Tim was able to replace it with a server in the same datacenter (probably on the same rack).

Over the course of my time with the network I’ve tried to use my previous experience to help it as much as possible. It’s quite well known that I’m not a great fan of the services we use, having used srvx for the majority of my time as staff of IRC networks, and have tried to bring some of the things that makes it so good to here. I kept pushing to have the infamous trace module added to our operserv (which went through and is generally now regarded as the most useful tool we have), and I am still working on finishing the HelpServ module which I blogged about last year (work has just restarted on it).

I was responsible for the formation of our own network dnsbl (taking over from one run by fx & co.), which for quite a while was one of the most accurate blacklists available for use. I’d like to think that its success spurred others (particularly dronebl) to better their own service – at the moment they are both very much on par in terms of IRC, although I have now started work on it again to hopefully improve it further.

I’m sure I’ve missed out large chunks, but it’s late now and trying to remember things is fairly difficult. I’ll end with saying that I’m looking forward to what the future brings for the network – I think 2010 will be a year for futher changes, upgrades and tweaks (in particular with the services) – and would like to see us expand our userbase even further.

Hello!

Following in Tim’s amazing size 12 shoes I have decided to make a small but hopefully informative post about myself and how I have had an effect on the network.

My journey into the land of SwiftIRC started back in mid-late 2005. I know what you’re thinking – “you haven’t been registered that long, liar!!” – but it’s true. I began using this amazing utility for the game RuneScape called ‘SwiftSwitch’ in which my then clan housed its channel. Little did I know what IRC was, or how to use it, I stumbled and found my way in. Let me first note that I had probably been using this toolkit for a good 6 months before I even realised it had any other features other than a high score lookup and loaded RuneScape.

I should mention that I went under the nickname of Steve| since 2006 until 2009. I decided to drop it as the | annoyed me.

When entering the work of IRC, I was daunted by the task of figuring out WTF to do. This wasn’t easy for a then 15 year old boy that couldn’t even bother to learn anything. But gradually I built up my knowledge of what IRC was, its workings and most importantly how I could ween my way up into the ranks of SwiftIRC!

#Greenjer was a channel I inevitably found my way into. A channel that was frequented by numerous people I got along with and had common interests with and who were rich on RuneScape. Many of these users still frequent the network and are even staff (in some sense) themselves.

Soon enough I worked my way into what was then #SwiftSwitch. Not even knowing or realising that this was the official channel for the client I was using, I began speaking with Strider and eventually ended up being put up for vote to become a HalfOp (by this time I knew what that meant). This channel opened many doors for me in terms of both accessibility and friendship.

Here I met Awong and Pancakes. These two users were very knowledgeable and helpful. Both convinced me to help in a channel called #irchelp. Not knowing many commands, I began helping and was given aliases off a fellow user. I must admit, I was an alias spammer. Lord did I spam those little fellas until no one else would even attempt to help.

After helping for a day or two, I was given voice access. I was so proud. This meant I was cool, right?

Anyway, I continued spamming those little aliases and helping people with commands I had no clue about myself – and still to this day have trouble remembering (I always forget how to register a nick, I know how horrible, but I’m use to the old method!). Days passed (about 3) and I came home from school to find myself as a HalfOp. “I’ve made it!” I though. Obviously I was such an access whore.

I continued pumping out these now feared aliased and within 10 days of being a regular helper, I was a HelpOP! I’d like to once again bring Tim into the conversation as at this time he was the HelpOp overlord and gave me the position. Thanks Tim!

Oh what it meant to be a HelpOp in early 2006. It was like being a famous movie star that everyone hated, but secretly wanted to be, so they would only suck up to you in private.

Days, months and a year passed. I continued to work on my support methods and “increase” my willingness to learn.

Come November 22, 2007 Karl and Myself were elected to be ‘Support Administrators’. This gave us the duty to

“monitor the help operators to ensure satisfactory activity and attitude… suspend help operator and mentee access in extreme circumstances… review mentee progress so as to recommend and vote on promotions and demotions.”

The system was doing well until it was realised that it almost completely relied on the activity of both Support Admins and Awong. Since this time the role has been dissolved and now only exists in some form of assumed role between the staff – I’d like to say that most of the IRCOps and a few SAs/NAs now perform these actions.

Now, I’m going to miss a chunk as it is rather boring…

The middle of 2008 spelt a new age for the Network Staff. Here, we saw the promotion of several HelpOps into IRCOps – This included Sara (early 2008, I think?), Remy, Hutchins and Myself.

While the aforementioned users were experienced in the commands and role of an IRCOp, I honestly had no clue. I didn’t know any commands, I didn’t know what I had to do, I just.. didn’t know! Thankfully I had a few people there to help me learn, namely Sara and Tim who taught me what I needed to learn.

Since this time, the administration of the network has basically stayed static – sure there were some SAs who would come and go, a few NAs resign or HelpOps cycled – but the attitude still stayed the same. That’s probably not what I should say, but I mean this in terms of the interactivity of the staff.

Hmm, didn’t I say this would be short? I guess I’ll try sum it up in dot points seeing there isn’t much more detail to skim over.

• I saw the coming and going and coming back again then going of one particular staff member who for some time I had a great friendship with, and hopefully still do.
• I’ve seen the HelpOp system come close to being scrapped, then reformed, then rediscussed, then applicants, then removing HelpOps, then a long application process to the now possible reformation of the HelpOp role.
• I’ve come to know numerous members of the user base who I would hope appreciate the work and dedication of the staff as a whole to improving and maintaining the network and I would also consider my e-friends.
• I’ve seen some good seeds and bad seeds, but appreciate the dynamic nature of the network as a whole and how easily it can be influenced in one way or the other – whether this is trends, attitudes or anything really. Let me give an example,’ /server op’ for free op! Or ‘Stfu or DDoS’ and even when we use to max 16k users when Pest Control wasn’t horrible.

Overall, I’ve come to enjoy my time on this network and hope to continue to be a part of it for [whatever time period it may be].

I’d like to further extend my gratitude to the users of this network who make it what it is, and the willingness of the staff to provide this environment for myself and thousands of other people to enjoy.

Even if there are bad times, the future seems a lot brighter. I hope! o.O

Good luck to you all,
Concept.

PS: I guess I’ve alluded to some future updates in this post too. So please, if you spot them feel free to comment and I’ll try to inform you there – or will eventually make another post.

“About our old server titan, where it went, why it went and why I didn’t really care.”

In one of the blog comments, someone asked what happened to titan and I had always meant to answer that but never got around to it.

Titan was hosted at a facility called colo4jax, now when we first started using it it was fantastic, everything was always fast and we rarely had an issue. SwiftIRC got DDoSed fairly regularly but aside from the occasional incident that actually knocked out the server it wasn’t really an issue.

However, as time passed things at this facility seemed to go downhill, general speeds were slower, response times from staff were slower, network issues were more common and when we got DDoSed it seemed to go down faster. The network didn’t seem to be being upgraded as more customers turned up.

Frequently the wholesaler/reseller I was buying through was trying to convince me to move to another facility which had an unmetered 100mbit connection instead of a 2TB limit like we had to “save us money on excess fees” or some rubbish. By the time we had gotten to this stage all data intensive applications had been moved elsewhere, not in small part because they kept limiting my switch port to 10mbit…when you average over 50mbit for small periods of the day, limiting to 10mbit is the biggest pain in the arse there is.

Eventually after one particularly large DDoS which took down all the SwiftIRC servers I got a simple email which stated “Unfortunately due to the amount of DDOS attacks this machine attracts, we are forced to terminate the account effective immediately. We wish you luck with your future providers and if you have any need for a provider where DOS is not an issue, please let us know.”.

After arranging to recover the data on the machine (which wasn’t very straightforward) we let it go, service had basically turned to the shit, we had a security issue caused by their staff doing poor vetting and at this time we were paying 2.5x the current retail price for the server. In short, it wasn’t worth it.

We’ve only had 1 IRC server in Australia since we started running IRC networks, this isn’t a coincidence. Data prices here are ridiculous.

Since investigating IRC opportunities in this part of the world I’ve only found 1 consumer offer that really accommodated running a server for SwiftIRC and this was the group that hosted zeus for a while. With these guys they used old rubbishy hardware and a shared unmetered port to try and save money, considering they no longer operate a VPS service (but the company appears to still exist and operate as a datacentre) I’d say this didn’t work out very well.

Our experience was pretty poor and I don’t think this was reflective of the company or of enterprise internet in Australia in general, for us we had the fibre link to the (very new) data facility attacked by contractors who didn’t dial before they dug (for non Australians, www.1100.com.au) and at that stage there wasn’t a second route…well not for the VPS trunk anyway. Then we had issues with the openvz virtualisation software that the host was running, several bugs conflicted with how their organisation was working and we caused a couple of the crashes ourselves.

Ignoring poor luck with small data operators and crappy software, running an IRC server here is still quite difficult, a lot of hosts won’t let you do it (it’s just like America), there is a much stronger emphasis on web applications in Australia than other hosting with voice services and then game servers being the next biggest contenders for the average consumer.

To successfully maintain an IRC presence in this part of the world you’re really looking at one of 3 options:

1) Pay heaps. We’re talking $250/m for 20gb of decent data in a location that doesn’t hate IRC. Depending on your host they might rape you when DDoS comes along but when you’re paying that sort of price for so little data they tend to work with you a bit more than their American counterparts.

2) Discounts from a wholesaler, from experience quite a few colo companies and network managers are willing to offer pretty decent discounts to community and free access services like a public IRC network. But even then you’re talking a pretty reasonable chunk of money, you would be better off getting a few US/EU servers instead.

3) Know people. Hosting from a corporate data room would work, heaps of large companies have massive data connections which are fairly idle and if you know the right people you could probably get away with running an IRC server out of one of them, after all it doesn’t use too much bandwidth and virtually no cpu/ram. Universities would be the best target for this, although I haven’t tried with them so I don’t know how friendly they are to the idea over here.

At the end of the day it’s just not worth it, IRC doesn’t really offer many benefits from low latency (especially when it has to communicate with an overseas hub anyway) like websites or game servers do and when the cost is equivalent to several servers in other locations which mostly represent far more users than Australia (or New Zealand or anywhere else around here) does the economics just tell you not to bother.

“Musings about the IRC experience from a worthless user on IRCWorld to a NA on SwiftIRC…with a few bits in between.”

So, I’m Tim, and let’s face it most of you wouldn’t know who I am (actually, those of you who would read this are probably the type who were around when I made myself known but anyway…) .

Let’s start with what I do here, I’m a Network Administrator and I was the second new server administrator after the SwiftIRC regime change all those years ago…but why? How about some backstory?

I have been using IRC for about 8 years now (maybe 9 or 10, I’m a bit hazy there) starting out with Zybez and Lachy’s RSToolkit on IRCWorld. IRCWorld was an interesting place, full of Europeans who mostly didn’t converse in English and then there was the RuneScape part, we must have been a right pain in the arse for all those non-English Europeans…actually from memory they were mostly Estonians.

As many of you may have noticed while using SwiftIRC, the RuneScape community that follows these “toolkits” has a certain immaturity that comes along with it and while this is annoying for the average observer as long as they only have to observe it’s really not an issue, but when these users get buttons that list all the channels on a network so they can join them at their whim then things get annoying. It appears that in general there is a lack of understanding about what the chat function of these toolkits is and how it operates, the users seem to be under the impression that everything to do with the chat is to do with their application…well, anyone who is reading this probably understand just how annoying that is.

Now, at IRCWorld there was this server admin, his name was speedis, and he got involved in our RuneScape community…very involved, he was extremely pushy (putting it nicely I guess) and he had issues with playing nicely with others. After a final incident at IRCWorld speedis delinked his server (in fact was probably forced out, the stories are rather conflicting) and he created RivalIRC…well it was an appropriate name. Here Lachy followed with his RuneScape Toolkit and formed the main userbase for this network, he was given an o:line and things carried on much as before except for these cool new things called vhosts.

Now, the vhosts I speak of are the IRCd given ones, completely virtual with no ounce of reality and every man and his dog had to have one (substitute dog with bot if you want) – they were a reasonably new feature to any production IRCd and the network staff seemed to enjoy playing with them, that is until every other user seemed to want theirs changed every other day; every time someone got banned from a channel they would just go to an IRCop and get their vhost changed, stuff like that. It was a pain.

But I digress (and will rant about vhosts another day), anyway, things were going well they had a reasonable little network going with an average of 300 users or something (far more when the toolkit was set to automatically connect to IRC…that was a silly plan), Lachy had a new, higher ability to manage the chat component of his program and speedis was now overlord.

I’m not sure if it came across clearly but during this time I was just an ordinary user, like most of the people reading this, so too were people like Sephiroth and Awong and Marius. Now at the same time as these two networks were operating and we were just common users Sephiroth and I were experimenting with different IRCds on different platforms, mostly separately but occasionally as a “network”.

So anyway, back to RivalIRC. As I mentioned earlier, speedis was difficult to deal with, and Lachy was no better at it than anyone else and one day he asked me how to set up an IRCd on the shell account he had just purchased – this was essentially the birth of RuneScapeIRC…I know, shit name, blame Sephiroth. After much discussion and compiling over the next week we decided to build a network administered by Lachy, Sephiroth and myself to house the RuneScape Toolkit and other related channels (Zybez, RuneWeb/RuneNews/etc), this was supposed to sit idle for a month or two while Lachy finished off the newest version of his toolkit and the unveiling was to occur simultaneous (that new version was never finished in case you were wondering, enter the rise of SwiftSwitch).

Then there was a leak, I think it was me, irc.mydomain.net was pointing to our network and some people used that to connect to my other mini-network instead of server.otherdomain.net…naturally these people couldn’t keep their mouths shut. At about 11:30 PM the next day we got some awkward news, “se.eu.rivalirc.net is rehashing…”, Lachy’s o:line was gone from that server…speedis was pissed.

Oh, sidenote, Lachy and I lived in Australia, Sephiroth in the UK, speedis in Sweden. Great time for the Europeans, shit time for us Southern Hemisphere, Pacific dwellers.

Right, so the current server admin was chucking a fit over our little plan to ease him out, plans had to be pushed forward and at 4am the next morning we had a new, live network full of users. That was a stressful 4 hours in a way I have not since experienced, there’s something about the stress of setting up an IRC network that is about to have an influx of users with no “real” experience that is just different to everything else.  A few of you might remember that the IRCd we used was called ViagraIRCd, now that’s an inappropriate name for a network full of kids and on a night full of issues the number of PMs and channel highlights which are just silly jokes about the name are really annoying at first but after a while…well it did become pretty funny. The IRCd was awesome though, for its time it was a nice mix between supreme stability of bahamut and the features of Ultimate/Unreal.

So our network ran pretty well, we got to try some new things and learn about the failures that are statistics packages, services packages and shell/vps hosts. We had a problem though, our main user base was RS Toolkit and Lachy was becoming inactive, he was hardly maintaining his product and eventually was never here at all; this became an issue as RuneScape evolved in ways that the existing product couldn’t maintain and Strider3282’s SwiftSwitch (I can’t remember the clan name whose world switcher it originally was so we’re calling it SwiftSwitch) was progressively bridging the gap between just begin a world jumper to a full featured toolkit product.

While we were maintaining our dwindling network (I say dwindling but the user numbers never really dropped they just stayed the same) Sephiroth was taking over FluxIRC where Runedude and Trent were in charge. Runedude was someone we had both known for a long time, since IRCWorld in fact, at this stage he was also one of my customers and the server that was green.fluxirc.net was hosted by me. As a result of this takeover Runedude and Trent were forced out, Hussam stayed, Sephiroth became boss (he still is in case you hadn’t noticed). The domain was Runedude’s and he took it with him to try and rebuild, but that failed, the network was effectively just renamed SwiftIRC and everything continued as normal because Strider decided to stick with Seph.

Now Sephiroth had a growing network, and it was growing pretty fast, he needed servers and I offered one (this was back in February 2007 according to NickServ…wow 3 years). I never intended to actually get involved in SwiftIRC, initially I was just offering infrastructure this was because I didn’t really like SwiftIRC, I had had dealings here in the past and while I was always treated with respect (all the current staff were my users at one stage) and pretty much got to do as I liked the users bothered me quite a bit. Frankly, a lot of the users still bother me quite a bit. Anyway, we decided to close RuneScapeIRC and move all our remaining users to SwiftIRC so ultimately I got properly involved anyway.

Oh, I missed a bit. A while before the last paragraph I had started making people IRCops on RuneScapeIRC (before this it was just the 3 of us) in particular there was Marius, Awong and Scott. At this stage Scott was an IRCop at SwiftIRC too.

Right, so around this time we basically had 1 network and we’re up to the HelpOps. When I first came to SwiftIRC the support network consisted of IRCops and a few individuals who were given operator status in #irchelp, it was decided that there should be a more structured support system so we let users fill in applications and we chose 20 “Help Operators”, of which 2 were Awong and Marius.

Since then the HelpOp system has changed several times, how #irchelp has operated has changed about as many. Frankly as far as I’m concerned the HelpOp group is fairly worthless as a support mechanism, but it’s quite good as a screening process for potential IRCops and many have come from this group: Awong, Marius, Steve|, Hutchins, Slaapkamer, Sara, Pancakes, Remy and Mithshark for a start.

Now that’s a brief overview of me starting on IRC to now, with a bit more emphasis on some parts than others (and not necessarily the most important bits) but the more key points that drove me to being here now. Now, as I mentioned at the start most of you probably don’t know me, that’s because for most of the last year I’ve been somewhat idle here, observing how things happen. To me IRC has always been something of a social experiment, and the perspective of a user is vastly different to that of a very involved administrator which is vastly different to that of an observing administrator. Unfortunately I can’t really comment on what it’s like to be a HelpOp (although I hear it’s unpleasant) and my experience of being an IRCop only was even more unusual than being an IRCop at SwiftIRC is.  From all of this I’ve found that IRC can be an absolutely fascinating thing and it’s certainly as interesting to experience as it is to observe…but at its core it’s still just multiplayer notepad.

I’ve basically ignored all the big structural events at SwiftIRC as they don’t really fit into an article of unstructured memories and musings such as this one but if anyone wants an explanation as to how, what or why something has happened at SwiftIRC (or RuneScapeIRC before that) over the last few years I can probably give some insight into it.

As a final thought, let’s list the servers I have run at SwiftIRC since coming here.

phoenix.il.us.swiftirc.net – Chicago, Illinois, USA.
griffin.mo.us.swiftirc.net – St. Louis, Missouri, USA. (was also green.fluxirc.net)
zeus.au.oc.swiftirc.net – Western Australia, Australia.
titan.fl.us.swiftirc.net – Jacksonville, Florida, USA.

Hello and welcome to the SwiftBlog!

Today dawns a new day for SwiftBlog. It has been decided to take the blog in a new direction which allows the staff to freely post blogs in order to express their own feelings on recent updates on the network, future projects and to initiate free flowing conversations with the user base through the comments system. Do note that some posts may still be seen in a similar fashion before dependant on the staff member posting or what the content contains.

In order to access these new blogs, staff members are given a Category page where they submit their content. These pages can be navigated to from the home page or by direct links such as http://blog.swiftirc.net/category/staff-blogs/concept – where the staff members name is changed to direct you to their specific page.  

We hope that this allows the staff to become more approachable by the general public and allows creative discussion concerning the network and its future.

Stay tuned for more!

I wish you all well,
Concept.