Firstly, zeus.mo.us.SwiftIRC.net has been granted a 30 day trial link after successfully passing its initial link vote. This server is located in St. Louis, Missouri, USA.

We would like to congratulate zeus’ admin istok, and wish them luck during their trial period.

In other news, runehq.mi.us.SwiftIRC.net has been delinked from the network. The server has been discontinued due to the server's admin Lord_Sobek no longer being a part of the administrative team on RuneHQ.net.

We would like to extend our thanks to both Lord_Sobek and the members of the RuneHQ administrative team for their generosity throughout their time on the network. They have been valuable assets to SwiftIRC and we wish them the best of luck.

The SwiftIRC Network Staff has decided to take on the example of other networks by providing you all, the SwiftIRC users, with an official IRCHelp class covering a plethora of topics, followed by a question and answer session after each topic has been elaborated on thorougly. Hopefully, this will give the opportunity for you to find out how our network works as well as find out something you may not have known about before.

The first topic that will be covered in our class will be Network Overview and Nickname Management. The following is a basic overview of what will be mentioned throughout the lecture:

Network Overview
- The importance of Wikipedia
- #IRCHelp vs. #Support
- When to use Wikipedia or the support channels
- Etc.

Nick Management
- Registering nicknames
- Common errors when registering
- Grouping/Ungrouping nicks
- Dropping nicks
- Set features
- Common set features that are shown in the /ns help set doc.
- Resetting your password
- Managing the security of your nick/nick group

General Overview
Event: First Official IRCHelp Class
Date: July 9th (a Friday), July 10th (a Saturday)
First Class Times: 12PM PST (Fri), 3PM EST (Fri), 8PM BST (Fri), 5AM AEST (Sat)
Second Class Times: 12AM PST (Sat), 3AM EST (Sat), 8AM BST (Sat), 5PM AEST (Sat)
Topic: Network Overview and Nickname Management
Who's in charge: Network Staff

If you wish to find out more information on this event and ones which may follow, or if you wish to provide feedback or suggestions, please visit this forum post.

SwiftIRC is always thriving to extend its hand towards the community. Numerous discussions have taken place concerning how the network could attain attention from its various communities and others which may be willing to make their home here at SwiftIRC.

RuneScape, a Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) developed by JaGeX already has a large following in and around the SwiftIRC Network. With this, the first SwiftIRC Event will be focused on this group in aim to further the interaction of key figures and players.

Event: Castle Wars
World: 151 (Members)
Date: Saturday, April 10th
Time: 07.00 PM EST, 11.00 PM GMT, 09.00 AM (Sunday) AEST
Clan Chat: SwiftEvents
Secondary CC: SwiftEvents2
Hosts: SwiftIRC + other RuneScape communities
IRC Channel: #Events

Requirements:
- There are no combat requirements
- A weapon, armour or other combat gear for those who wish to shed some blood
- A big smile and your best behaviour

This event will be hosted by numerous figures from the RuneScape community. This may also include staff from SwiftIRC. Please be conscientious of what these people are telling you – they will be ranked in the Clan Chat(s) and have access on the channel.

As the discussion of SwiftIRC and similar chat networks are against the rules of RuneScape, we do NOT condone their discussion in-game. Please be cautious in regards to the JaGeX/RuneScape rules and Terms of Service. As a network we do not excuse any behaviour which may reflect poorly on similar events or the network itself.

If you have any further questions or feedback regarding this event or any future events, please contact staff who can be found in the #Events channel.

In other news,

#SwiftTrivia has been created as a community channel to allow users to come and take part in the fun of answering over 199,000 general knowledge questions.

This channel allows users to participate in the excitement of trivia in a fun and secure channel.

If you think you’re clever, or know some useless facts, this may be the channel for you!



Last edited by Concept on 2010-04-09 05:46:48 UTC

Greetings.

The role of a Help Operator is something that has been questioned numerous times for its effectiveness. Recently it was discussed that this role should be modified to allow for specific areas of the network to be targeted.

With this, 3 roles which fall under the umbrella of a HelpOp have been formed. This includes:

Development Coordinator: The role of a Development Coordinator is to explore and consolidate the workings of SwiftIRC as to improve the network. As the name of this role suggests, it is more focused on developmental aspects of the network, which could include the development of the website and its content, assistance in the creation of new services or modules and initiation of further projects which may benefit the network.

Moderation Manager: A Moderation Manager is a person who excels in their communications with the user base but has the ability to manage and present themselves in a professional and respectable manner, allowing them to be approachable by a general audience. This role indicates that HelpOps which fall under this category have the ability to moderate the user base through various aspects such as the forums, and manage certain projects formed by fellow HelpOps.

Community Liaison: The role of the community liaison is to ensure that SwiftIRC offers a friendly atmosphere and unconditional support to its communities. These people must be approachable and respectable in order to be in constant contact with the community and to consolidate ideas or suggestions that that they may be interested in. As community suggests, they will be purely focused on the users.

In other news, the Network Helper or ‘HelpOp’ applications have once again been opened for acceptable users to be invited in to the support team.

Unlike other years, these applications will have no closing date or a suitable number of new staff. This means that we will accept new users when needed or if their application is to a superior standard, so please do not expect your application to be processed in a small timeframe. These applicants will be subject to review by pre-existing Network Staff. This feedback will then shape the final decision as to whether or not the applicant is accepted as a Help Operator.

Acceptable applicants will be trialled through a test period similar to the mentee system or processing of applications in prior years before becoming staff.

Applications are relatively comprehensive, and I advise only those who wish help make the SwiftIRC support system work to submit an application. There is no word limit, but I recommend that any responses be extensive enough so as to answer the question, yet concise so as to remain relevant.

Applications can be submitted through your User Control Panel, which is accessed by logging in to this website with your SwiftIRC username and password. Alternatively, you can visit the following link to find out how to apply: http://www.swiftirc.net/index.php?page=helpop

Kind regards,
Concept

Dear users,

After a successful vote, the server purple.il.us.SwiftIRC.net has been granted a 'permanent' link. This server has proven to be a decent addition to the US server pool.

Please congratulate our newest server and services administrator BIF.

Regards,

cursive

Last edited by cursive on 2010-03-07 20:10:24 UTC

Hi,

Now that we have had a chance to test the changes made to our ircd software, we are pleased to announce that we have now deployed the new ircd onto the main network.

Instead of delinking, updating and then relinking individual servers over a period of time, we have chosen to build an entirely new network and have users connect to it. This avoids unnecessary disruption from netsplits, and means we don't run into any problems with compatibility between the old and new version.

We have updated the main round-robin and individual servername hosts to resolve to the new network. If you find yourself still connecting to the old network due to caching, then please try connecting to ircnew.swiftirc.net instead. If you are still having difficulties then connect to 94.23.157.150 directly.

A full technical list of changes can be found at http://www.swiftirc.net/ircd_changes.txt, but the main changes that will affect you as a user are:

Channelmode +B

Blocks multi-target messages (amsgs) sent by certain clients.

To use: /mode #channel +B

Extended Invex mode +L

+L ~#sourcechannel is now required to be set as an invite exception on the target channel for a link (channel mode +L) to be accepted.

To use: /mode #targetchannel +I ~L:#sourcechannel (note I is an uppercase i)

Finally, we have (hopefully) fixed the myriad of bugs and annoyances that have plagued us for the past few months, including the infamous 'fake direction' issue and the problems with idle times.

You may also notice that we have completed our anonymisation updates, though this should have little to no effect on your use of the network.

As this is our first news post of 2010, we would like to take this - somewhat late - chance to wish you all a happy and prosperous new year.

Note: We are aware that now having +m set will return the user the +mu message instead of the original one. We are also aware of +B being replaced with ? in return messages when someone tries to set it without the required permission to do so. These will be fixed within time.

Last edited by Katlyn on 2010-02-06 12:54:06 UTC

As you might be aware, over the past few months we have made some modifications to our IRC server software. Unfortunately many of these changes were incomplete or even introduced new problems.

We now have a newer version that we believe is ready to be used on SwiftIRC - however, we would first like to expose this new version to some real users. Thus we have installed the new software on a small "test network".

We would invite anyone interested to join this network at irc.dev.swiftirc.net - we would like for people to use the network as they normally would, as well as try out some of the new features detailed in our change log here: http://www.swiftirc.net/ircd_changes.txt (note, this is a somewhat technical list).

We have a feedback topic set up at http://forum.swiftirc.net/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=23411 and welcome any bug reports or opinions on our changes.

Last edited by Sephiroth on 2010-01-03 00:42:47 UTC

Over the past few weeks, the SwiftIRC Staff have composed a set of rules which BNC providers on SwiftIRC must adhere to in order to be allowed their services to remain.
The guidelines are set up in such a way that they should not cause any inconvenience for any BNC provider as they are primarily based on common sense, and our desire to keep any abuse to a minimum (if not eradicate it completely!).

- BvHosts should not consist of profanity, racial slurs or any form of personal attacks
- BNCs should be auto-suspended/removed on KILL
- Users should not be allowed to change their host at will
- BNC providers must force unique idents on users
- BNC providers should ensure their service is not used to harvest nicknames and/or channels
- BNCs should have a human user actively using the BNC, if no user is on it, the BNC should be removed within a reasonable timeframe so as not to waste user space which could be better served for real clients.
- BNC provider staff members found breaking network rules should be removed off staff, or risk having their service provisioning privileges revoked
- BNC provider owners found breaking network rules will have their service provisioning privileges revoked immediately

We understand that some of these changes may require some work on the providers side, which is why we are allowing a one week grace period to implement features to make your services comply with the above mentioned rules. (With the exception of the more strict ones such as abuse from provider owners and the likes).

Last edited by Sara on 2009-11-22 22:47:52 UTC