A trend of observation

[DiMENSiON] · Eleet Joined: 06 Sep 2003 Posts: 621

people spammin sucks... but also having olines sucks.. o:lines are like drugs... you start, you want more more more and then you realise it has ruined your life... :-\ so i spend my time now amusing myself by adding whois lines in for myself..

nick is a Network Administrator
nick is available for help.
nick is a Bot on grenadeinmouth
nick takes it hard up the ass

MexDownunda · none Joined: 19 Sep 2005 Posts: 46

Wonder if anyone here is aware that there are actualy IRCops out there who work hard to earn their o-lines for the sake of the users? Who become IRCops out of a sense of "gratitude" for the free use of services? Believe it or not, these people do exist. Some of them are older, or home bound and use irc chat to keep connected to the world, and they see a need for the older/home bound IRCop to serve THEIR needs.

While it seems to be an ego thing with the majority of "opers," who tend to take their emotional insecurities into their help channels, which in turn leads to the undermining of moral and eventual destruction of many networks, this is not true of this "class" of opers. However, many admins can't see this. They lump ALL persons who become IRCop into the ego class, and treat them as lower class citizens.

IRCops, like real life people, come in all flavours. If one wants a truly working network, search these user friendly opers out and put them to work on your networks. Then treat them with the respect they have earned. THEY are truly there for your users and will protect their home network and help it grow and thrive.

Also, please remember when your network falls apart, and we hope none of them will, some of your users have no concept of what has happened behind the scenes. They are suddenly separated from friends with no idea where to find them again. This is especialy true of support channels for everything from AA to Zits. If you are going to take your network off line, d-link or move, please, let these channels know, help them find new homes where they can stay together.

Don't let oper/network infighting destroy innocent friendships and mess with users lives.

Thanks for the forum, hope to learn a lot here.

Keep smiling! =)

MexDownunda
older, user friendly oper
happily at home at:
serenity-irc.net

ashfire908 · none Joined: 13 Sep 2005 Posts: 42

PingBad · Guru Joined: 05 Feb 2005 Posts: 2064 Location: New Zealand

Another trend I have noticed in recent times is users and the "comfort zone"...

There are scores of IRC networks these days plying for a share of the global IRC userbase, yet they seem to offer the same stuff: "Friendly staff, loads of great people, etc"... which is becoming spam in itself these days.

If that's all a network has to offer, why would a user move from their well established camp on the networks they do frequent? They have already found a friendly environment in their current online homes (because they know a few people there). The hard thing that faces each Network Owner (and their appointed Co-Owner(s) -- if any) is trying to be unique when nearly every conceivable concept for IRC has been covered. There aren't many networks that don't offer some form of nickname/channel protection services, or trivia, or even xDCC (if you're that way inclined). So where's the next "killer app" for IRC going to come from?

lagmaster · Lurker Joined: 06 Nov 2004 Posts: 116

for a decent network to survive nowdays to need to find a niche market, not just "a friendly place to go" type irc network, there are 1000's of them about and im amazed how so many survive.

from what i see there are a bunch of users who somehow created a irc network and think they know it all. (wait for a ddos attack! Razz

) some of them advertise way to much on here and leave spelling mistakes in their posts. yet they can drum up users? maybe users you dont want on your network but still.

finding irc opers who are willing to learn how to oper it hard, but i was kinda lucky in a way, there's a few on my network that was willing to learn and over time i promoted them. finding experienced ones who know multiple irc protocols and are willing to sit on semi small networks is another question.

you sort of have to make do with what you have a hope your network is a success over time.

Loser04 · Posted: Dec 21, 2005 2:52am Post subject:

I actually decided to create my own network when I got tired of having to move from network to network because of problems, normally my friends leave or people abused their o:lines.

I created my first net (darkstorms.com) a long while back, most don't remember it, but it was a good sized net, just yea. lol

It was a place for me and my group, i didnt have intentions to make it public, but friends invited friends, and it got public by word of mouth.

Yogi · Newbie Joined: 12 Mar 2005 Posts: 65

PingBad · Guru Joined: 05 Feb 2005 Posts: 2064 Location: New Zealand

shadow16 · Lurker Joined: 02 Sep 2005 Posts: 186 Location: IRC

I've noticed that opers on small networks almost always automatically resort to /gline or /kill when they are annoyed by somebody.

Because they are oper, they seem to forget about the little, less disruptive commands like /kick.

ashfire908 · none Joined: 13 Sep 2005 Posts: 42

shadow16 · Lurker Joined: 02 Sep 2005 Posts: 186 Location: IRC

I always remind my opers, what would they do if this was a large network like Dalnet, when there are problems in the main channel. Normally a larger network wouldn't react with a gline so quickly.

MexDownunda · none Joined: 19 Sep 2005 Posts: 46

shadow16 · Lurker Joined: 02 Sep 2005 Posts: 186 Location: IRC

Yea nobody is going to use ONLY one person's small network. Wouldn't that be boring.

JasonC · none Joined: 18 Jun 2006 Posts: 4

I know that a lot of people just want a oline because they want to be a part of something. Well, at least I was that way. I was an ircop on a few small networks a few years ago and eventually stopped using IRC for a few years. I have just recently started using it again and have founded my own network.

MrBurns · Posted: Jun 28, 2006 11:51am Post subject:

I would agree there is a serious lack of "trained" IRCops. Whenever somebody on my network asks for ops, I make sure that person knows what he's dealing with so he doesn't accidentally glines the entire network or screws something else up. Also, there are a number of strict rules that opers have to obey, after all they are users too. Police officers can't just run around shooting people either.

During my time on IRC (about 10 years in total) I've been an IRC operator or server admin on various networks and I've been a shell provider for little over a year. I've written a manual for Unreal3.2.x and have written several scripts (mIRC bots, TCL scripts for eggdrops etc) and for a short time I even worked on creating my own services for Unreal, but it took too long so I created a backup service instead.

To reply to some of the later posts: There are a lot of networks where people are glined for no reason or at random, or banned very quickly because the IRCop in question "was in a bad mood" or the user in question "annoyed" him. On the other hand, there are a lot of networks where IRCops sit on there lazy ass doing nothing at all and when you ask one of them why they either ignore you or ban you ( I won't mention any names Austnet ). In either case that's wrong. The main function of IRCops is to keep the network running smootly. If there is a problem, they should deal with it.

When it comes to people who are "annoying": on my network there is a simple rule... channel problems are for the channel operators, network problems are for the IRC operators. If somebody acts like a jerk, let the channel owner or one of the channel ops handle it. If they start flooding it becomes a network issue and they can be killed / glined.