Forum:IRC Server

I mentioned the idea awhile back, and I was replied to saying that it was interesting. But, I've never seen it seriously discussed. Has anyone ever thought of Wikia setting up it's own IRC Server?

In my experience things like this are usually brushed off because they haven't been seriously discussed and because of that the advantages of the idea are not known.


 * Just a few things detailing some of the possibilities I can think of:

WebServers are run off port 80, and IRCServers are run off port 6667. For those who aren't tech-savvy, this means that irc://irc.wikia.com can be a IRCServer at the same time that http://irc.wikia.com is a website.

Currently http://irc.wikia.com is used as the CGI interface. This is one of a few different ways to access IRC. You can use a proper client, the CGI script, and there is even a MediaWiki extension which lets you access IRC inside the wiki. (IRC Chat)

Remembering that a website can be run off the same domain we also remember that wiki pages use /wiki/ in the url. This means we could even have a special wiki for the subject. I'm not meaning the http://ircwiki.wikia.com wiki (Which, BTW are Inactive and don't have anything (The de even has en's stuff)) but a special type of Wikia. We could give each Wikia's IRC channel a small page on this wiki to help explain it to people looking for an IRC Channel, and using that extension readers could access the IRC while still in the wiki. Those who don't like the smaller size could still open up the CGI:IRC. If we did it right, it might even be possible to configure the various gateways such as http://irc.wikia.com/uncyclopedia to be editable by certain pages in the wiki. This means that wiki would be able to update and keep that portal looking good.

Think of this as an example:
 * Going to irc://irc.wikia.com/GraphicalEntertainment would bring you to the #GraphicalEntertainment channel on wikia's irc server.
 * Going to http://irc.wikia.com/GraphicalEntertainment would bring you to the CGI:IRC gateway for GraphicalEntertainment channels.
 * Going to http://irc.wikia.com/wiki/GraphicalEntertainment would bring you to the informative wiki entry which would give info such as how to connect to the channel, links to the irc://irc.wikia.com/GraphicalEntertainment channel for clients, the CGI portal, and even to the in-wiki IRC Chat (Special:IRC/GraphicalEntertainment).

Other than that, the wiki could also have various other types of info; It could have simple guides on registering your username, setting up a new channel for a wiki, and even a list of various irc commands you can use. Kinda a method of helping even the irc newbies on Wikia to feel comfortable in the IRC Channels.


 * There are even advantages in IRC itself to running our own IRC Server:

Consider this, we currently have IRC Cloaks which are in the form. But of course, since every channel in a Wikia IRC server will be a Wikia channel. The wikia part of the cloak doesn't have much point. But there is a way to use it... A user by the name Example, who goes on various Wikia and just doesn't stick to one could have the cloak. A user by the name Watcher who always sticks around central could have the cloak. But this is where it gets more interesting. People could have cloaks meant for the wiki they frequent the most. For example, if I were to have the Animepedia as the wiki I always stick around I could use the cloak. It gives various users a bit of a sense of identity of what wiki they belong to.

There's another huge advantage. Administration; Currently Angela has to ask a FreeNode admin while their on to add a Cloak to someone here who requests it (This can take time, I'm still waiting). But if Wikia were the one hosting the server, then they would have full control. Just about any of the staff could have the ability to add a cloak to someone, they could even do it right away without needing to wait and watch for an IRC admin to come online. (We've got Central Sysops, Mailing List Admins, we could also have normal user's as IRC Admins to help out with this to)

Another bit of administration is how on a Wikia hosted server complete control could be setup with a proper group system. Various commands can be controlled, and even a GroupServ could hold levels like Staff, IRCOp, and various other things relating to different Wikia controlling commands.

The MOTD which normally shows up when someone connects to IRC, could even be customized to direct people to the various Wikia channels.

If we went a bit further, it would be possible to configure some things to integrate with MediaWiki. The NickServ Service does have a URL that can be set for a user, but we could go further and add an option to link your registered NickServ account to your MediaWiki account and have links to your userpage, talkpage, etc... Even a home Wikia. Since it's possible to make an IRC Server connect with MySql to store some of it's data instead of using the filesystem we could even make some IRC things configurable via MediaWiki. We could technically even let users reserve nicknames matching their MediaWiki username for themselves. Or let them override a NickServ nick if it matches their MediaWiki name to stop a user from stealing it or kick off an imposter. ~Dantman(talk) tricks May 18, 2007 @ 03:01 (UTC)