I'll reassure everyone here. There is NO WAY that we can spy on people's chat without you knowing, if that's what people are worried about.
And this is only for channels. We can view the list of channels, we can see what channels people are using but if we wanted to listen to chat happening in a certain channel we would have to join like everyone else, and everyone there would see the join message. There are no "special commands" that would allow us to listen to chat secretly.
As for PM's, they are even more secure. There is no way for anyone to tell if two people are having a PM, and no way to listen to the contents of a PM.
The only things we can directly see are this:
- When you connect, the server sends a notice saying 'Client connecting: <hostname> <nickname>' where hostname and nickname are your real hostmask and nickname.
- When you identify Services will put out a message to the IRCops saying that <nickname> has identified with NickServ.
- We can list the channels you're in as well as your real hostname/IP. Anyone else can list the channels you're in as well through a /whois, and the only reason we would need your real hostname or IP is if we needed to add a G line (which has not been a problem of course).
Even then, it's more likely that your conversation could be sniffed while in transit by someone else. For that reason it's generally not a good idea to transmit credit card numbers, bank information, etc... through IRC.
If you want a secure / encrypted connection to IRC, connect to irc.outpostuniverse.net on port 6697. You have to have SSL support in your client for this to work.
The only things that I can see which could be confusing / bewildering to people are:
-- NickServ / ChanServ. It's different, but if you've ever used irc on one of the big networks like DALnet they're almost exactly the same. IMHO they're easier to use than Q and L. When I first used IRC I used to connect to DALnet so I knew the services pretty well (and you could figure them out really easily). When I started connecting to Quakenet it seemed like it took ages before I understood the purpose of Q and L. (It was also strange that Q could handle both nickname 'registration' -- you don't own your nickname as well as channel management).
ChanServ is a lot more powerful than L / Q in many ways. Let me put it this way -- it's good enough that we don't need the bot for channel management. The bot is now just there for stats logging and games in the Lobby.
You can get a list of all the commands by typing /ns help for NickServ, and /cs help for ChanServ. You can get help on a specific command by putting the command after 'help', ex: /ns help update
-- The strange user and channel modes you see. For example, the ~, &, and % symbols.
The server has a good help system built right in for these, which you can see a list of categories by typing /helpop.
If you type /helpop umodes you can see a list of all the user modes and what they mean.
If you type /helpop chmodes you can see a list of all the channel modes and what they mean.
-- Lag / netsplits. Yes, for many people the lag is really bad since we only have two servers set up at the moment. However, this should change after we get more servers in different parts of the world. As I've said before, if you are in good standing with the community (that is, you've been around for a while) and have a server running either Linux or Windows, as well as a broadband internet connection, we can put something like that to use to setup another IRC server in your area and link it to our network.
We wouldn't need to have administrator / root however we would need to be able to request that certain software / libraries are installed, or be able to do this ourselves.
We would need some kind of remote access / SSH however so we can log into the server and set up the IRC server ourselves.
As for netsplits, they have only happened one time and that was really on purpose. (I changed some settings on the servers and had to /SQUIT and then /CONNECT them to get them to start using the new settings, causing a 5-10 second netsplit). Any scheduled maintenance of this type will be broadcast through the "Global" bot before it happens, and we will broadcast another message when the maintenance is complete.
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Like I've said before, I would think running our own IRC server would be a plus. If you have a problem with anything, for example if you don't understand how something works or have problems with the services, just come to the #admin channel and ask away. Or ask us directly for that matter.
You can come to one of us directly, we won't bite. You don't have to go through some strange process like you would on Quakenet to talk to an IRCop (join #help, present your request, get a 'ticket' from a bot to join #feds ...)
We are available and everyone knows how to get to us.
Poll
