Removed nets, updated network submit

Jason · Last edited by Jason on Jun 06, 2003 8:16pm; edited 1 time in total

Today, two people spent many hours going over the network listings that have had issues with connecting.

70 networks were carefully inspected, and determined to be out of service. These networks are moved to a special monitor service where they are checked once in a while to see if they return to service.

This has dropped the number of networks SearchIRC indexes to ~630.

The total number of IRC networks in the database is now ~740.

I've also updated the IRC network submission page. URLs are validated, and IRC servers checked. So anyone submitting a network, will have to submit a network with valid servers or it will not be submitted.

Mary · SearchIRC Admin Joined: 03 May 2003 Posts: 692

/me jumps in with a few comments:

We went over approximately 200 networks that had connection issues today. The majority were networks changing names and dns, or using an unusual port to connect, and were very easy to fix - so now their listings will be fresher.

However, of the 70 that we dropped about 50 had the same problem - we could not connect to the network's round robin or servers of record, and the network did not have a website where we could get contact information or the names of other servers. We can't tell if these networks are up and running on other servers - or if they have long term dns issues, or merged with other networks, or no longer exist. Reluctantly, we moved these networks to our "not indexed" list (the networks listed in grey at the bottom of our alphabetical listings). As Jason said, our bots will still try to connect occasionally, just to see if the network ever comes back to life.

The 20 that remained were web hosting companies / shell providers that once had IRC servers open to users. If the address we have for the IRC server no longer works, and the shell provider no longer advertises or promotes that IRC server on their web site, there really is no sense leaving these listings in our active network list.

We also added eight new networks today, continuing to bring you the most complete, and current IRC network (and channel!) listings available on the web! I hope you enjoy. :)

Mary