Ok, as Jackal announced over in the Community forum, he's kindly offered to host an IRC channel for Dumpshock. Once we have the server move settled and everything,we'll be hooking him up with a domain name for irc.dumpshock.com to make it all official like. But in the meantime... Download a copy of mIRC (Or whatever other IRC program you might like) and head on over to the server. Chat a bit, meet some of your fellow Dumpshockers, heck maybe you can set up a Play by IRC game! Lets stress test the server a bit!

Here's the info, straight from the Jackal's Mouth:

For those using web based clients that do not have the option to put in the port address, simply type in the IP address as 72.20.40.38:7500

Or you can just click HERE just be sure to type /nick <yournickhere> when you do so we know who you are.

And now announcing, with the completion of the maintenance on the server we now are official.

irc.dumpshock.com:7500

Ok, got a quick and dirty front end up on the http://irc.dumpshock.com/ site now just so there is something there other than a blank page. Included the link to Mibbit for people to quickly hop on to the server.

Just a little input from me:
That color sheme on that page is fugly as hell x.x
Also, a bit hard to read, especially along the links.

Yeah, I already talked to Jackal about that. He threw it together in a couple minutes before he dahsed off to work, and I think he messed up a color code in the HTML. At leaset, I hope he did, and that's not intentional
`

*grins* ^^

Maybe he really likes the baby poop green background color. Who are you to judge!

That is, quite possibly, the ugliest colour scheme I have ever seen...

Ok, so apparently something in the code was bjorked. It was suppose to be a black background and I had accidently keyed it as #Black which had a very interested result. It's fixed now.

I'm a little curious... why bother setting up your very own IRC server? Why not set it up on any of the numerous networks?

I used to be an IRCop for the battletech side of the house back when Evilnet was up and running. Since then the channel is still alive and kicking on Slashnet. I guess I just don't see the advantages unless you need to run custom services which may not be present on some of the bigger networks.

Even then things like dicebots are generally easy to run by players in their own channels.

Not that this isn't good news, just seems like extra hassle for little gain.

Several of reasons.

1. So our users don't have to fight over user names as much.

2. So we have services such as nick and chan server.

3. To allow more freedom of speech, aka the #Bulldrek channel.

4. To avoid unnecessary bans. Case in point, I got banned off ETG because I tried out a new IRC client and it didn't like something about the client so it banned me. Not a temporary ban, but a permanent ban.

5. Far fewer spambots to deal with.

6. Dumpshock used to have it's own IRC server many many years ago, as far back as when this was called Deep Resonance instead of Dumpshock.

7. Only person that has any hassle here is me, it's not detracting from the admins so if your concern was that it would prevent them from maintaining the forums then your concerns are misplaced.

8. Our old server was active till about 3 or 4 years ago. It was one of the best IRC servers I've ever used and since I've been working closely with Bull and other Dumpshockers on another project I felt nostalgic and wanted to revive it.

It's not costing anyone else anything to run or use, and it's available to anyone that wants to run an IRC RPG, not just Shadowrun.

Couple reasons...

Jackal offered to set it up. This is probably the biggest reason. Dumpshock got hacked pretty badly a few years ago, and the exploit came through the IRC server we were running, we think. So when we got everfthing rebooted, it was decided not to bother with a new server, since it was extra hassle on our part, and could be a weakness. Jackal was a long time IRC regular, and he's been wanting to see an official Dumpshock IRC server again, so he offered to host it. It's hosted seperately on it's own server, so even if it is hacked or there is a flaw with it, nothing else will be effected. So yay.

There's actually been a few splinter IRC servers kicking around since the original Dumpshock IRC server went offline about 3 years ago, but since none of them were an "official", there's never been a single point of congregation for them, even when folks would advertise around here. Being Official means that we can once again try and funnell folks to a single location. Does that mean everyone will end up here? Probably not. But most of the IRC-minded folk likely will. And that will help build the community.

And one big reason to run your own server is control. We have Nickservers in place, so people can register their names. And we can directly deal with spammers, or people causing problems, or harrassment, or whatever else, so that chatters and people trying to game via IRC can do so without too much hassle. We're not gonna have random idiots wandering in looking for A/S/L like we would on Undernet, or any of that other crap. Plus, if it goes down, Jackal can directly look into it, or simply smack and reboot his machine. All of which is a huge advantage over using one of the larger public servers.

Bull

To be more specific, I can connect to the server through a SSH and restart it from there. This is a real host, not some computer in my living room. That's another point I wanted to stress. It does have DDoS filters in place on the off chance we get targeted by spammers. Having that direct control means that if they do attack the server I can just change the port address on them if they're some how getting around a k/g-line ban.

Well, I suppose I could be convinced to idle in a dumpshock IRC channel. Time to go boot up the old xchat.

You obviously weren't around for some of the earlier iterations of the Dumpshock or Deep Resonance forums.

A sticky for the Dumpshock IRC channel thread would be good too.

this thing definitely deserves a sticky, make sure everyone's aware of this things existance

I remember even further back when Dumpshock used to be #Shadowrun on Undernet. ;) Wow.. the memories that brings up!