The Michigan Wiki's IRC channel (chat room) is where the Michigan Wiki meetings and general discussions are held. Between these, the channel serves as a place for general chit-chat about the wiki, as well as a method of quickly notifying administrators about vandalism, site issues, or asking questions.
Topics[]
In general, ##Michigan-project IRC is intended for chatting about the Michigan Wiki or affiliate projects. Off-topic discussion is generally allowed with the consent of the administrators or majority of users, except in the case of official functions such as wiki meetings. The rules below will help clarify this.
Rules[]
The rules for ##Michigan-project IRC are simple:
- Don't be a jerk. You will never be asked to be "nice," and personal attacks are virtually unpreventable on IRC. But as a guideline, don't go out of your way to irritate others. Vicious abuse is grounds for sanctions.
- No whining. Users who ask for something from another IRC user and are refused it should not stoop to complaining, which is grounds for sanctions. It is acceptable to be persistent, but in a mature manner.
- Politics and/or religion may only be discussed with unanimous consent. If someone doesn't want to talk about them, drop the subject or take the conversation elsewhere.
- The Michigan Wiki's official language: English. We don't care if it's British or American, as long as it's not "L33t" or "TXT." Abbreviations are fine on IRC, but keep it within reason.
- No spamming. The meaning should be obvious. Don't say the same thing six times because no one is responding to you.
The standard sanctions for dealing with violators of IRC policies are as follows:
- Warning. Directed at the violator by an operator.
- Kicking. Should only occur when policy violations, spamming, trolling, and similar transgressions are sufficiently obvious and continuous that all operators agree.
- Channel mute. All users are voiced except the violator, allowing said violator to grow frustrated and quit on his or her own.
- Kickbanning. When all else fails.
How to join[]
For advanced users:
For others:
You can either use the standard Wikia web client in your web browser, or install a specialized chat program called an IRC client. These are available for a variety of platforms.
Web client[]
- Wikia has a CGI:IRC gateway, but currently does not grant direct access to ##Michigan-project in a way that lets you join the chat room from a normal web page. This will be rectified with time.
Windows[]
- mIRC is the classic Windows IRC client. The main drawbacks of mIRC are the fact that it's not free and that the configuration options are more extensive than a lot of users are used to. (Only partial UTF-8 support - see below)
- Trillian handles IRC. It's a little complicated to set up, but it is a handy program to have anyway for the other things it does. (No UTF-8 support - see below)
- Miranda IM - a multi-client, like Trillian, but rather minimalist and open source. (UTF-8 support requires patching - see below)
Linux[]
- Pidgin is a multi-client that comes preinstalled with Ubuntu and several other Linux distributions.
- Kopete is a multi-client, the KDE counterpart of Pidgin.
- Konversation is a KDE application with interface similar to X-Chat; it is an IRC-only client.
- irssi is an IRC-only client that uses a text-mode user interface.
- BitchX is an IRC-only console application client.
- EPiC is an IRC-only client for Unix systems that is descended from the ircII client, it uses a text-mode user interface.
Mac[]
- Snak handles IRC rather nicely, and is one of the few Mac-only clients that still work flawlessly.
- X-Chat Aqua is a full featured IRC client for OS X that is easy to setup and use.
- Colloquy is an open-source IRC, SILC and ICB client for Mac OS X.
Crossplatform[]
- Opera web browser has a built-in IRC client.
- ChatZilla is an extension for the Mozilla Firefox web browser. This is one of the most commonly used IRC gateway program by Wikia users.
- JWChat - had some script errors in Firefox, but clicked "Stop script" and it worked fine after that.
- X-Chat is perhaps the most well-known IRC client for Linux, included into nearly every distribution, which has recently grown in popularity on Windows as well. Note that the official Windows version (as opposed to Linux) is shareware, but unofficial free Windows builds are available, for example, here.
- Quassel is cross-platform, distributed IRC client, meaning that one (or multiple) client(s) can attach to and detach from a central core
Setup instructions[]
To log in, you need to configure your client. After you log in, it is rather straightforward. The parameters are:
- Server: irc.freenode.net
- Channel: ##Michigan-project
Your web browser may be preconfigured to open IRC links in some IRC client, so you can try clicking this link:
Most IRC clients, in particular mIRC, Miranda and X-Chat, have "Freenode" in the default network list, you only need to select it. After you are connected to the server, type /join ##Michigan-project in the reply box and press Enter. If not, just add.
Custom instructions for specific clients to come.
UTF-8[]
The ##Michigan-project channel uses the UTF-8 encoding, just like the Michigan Wiki proper. This should not pose a problem with English, as UTF-8 is backwards compatible with ASCII-127, but non-Latin scripts (such as Greek or Cyrillic) may be rendered improperly in UTF-8-incapable clients.
Known issues:
- mIRC: partial UTF-8 support since version 6.2; it can display UTF-8 messages sent by others properly, but always sends messages in the system encoding. No UTF-8 support prior to 6.2.
- Miranda: requires a patch. The archive contains a file named irc.dll, which should be extracted to Miranda's plugins directory.
- Trillian: no UTF-8 support for IRC, although it's present for AIM/ICQ.