SwiftBlog

Archive for the ‘Katlyn's Blog’ Category

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.