Join the new world

Howdy, ahava3233 here. Anyway, I wanted to write a brief article for new citizens regarding our IRC chat outside the game so you can all get involved in our country's community; the more able-bodied, intelligent, social and diligent players we have, the better! The trolls are gone now too, so IRC is a thriving and welcoming community; you have no excuse not to log in!

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Introduction

IRC, or Internet Relay Chat, is a protocol for instant messaging that allows for very flexible and large scale chatrooms for communities such as eJapan. It is also particularly easy to connect and one-on-one private instant messaging is built-in and very easy on the platform.

Anyway, let me give you some of the basics...

IRC chat is hosted on something called a server, which has a domain name (such as irc.rizon.net). On this server many chats occur at the same time in group sessions on "channels" or privately one on one. You are represented by something called a nick on these channels.

eJapan's official IRC chatroom (by legislative consensus) is #nippon (all channel names start with a hash tag) on irc.rizon.net (or just Rizon or rizon.mibbit.org).

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How To Connect

The easiest way to connect to the official IRC chatroom is by going to this URL and using an IRC client called mibbit (bookmark it!).

http://tinyurl.com/9by2kux
(http://client01.chat.mibbit.com/?server=rizon.mibbit.org&channel=%23nippon)

Just set your nickname and enter the chat, simple! From there, you will be presented with the chatroom on #nippon. You can chat in the main area or click user names to chat one on one!

There are other clients you can use to connect as well. Personally, I use something called pidgin, which logs every conversation and also supports various other chat protocols such as MSN/AIM/Gtalk/etc. There are other options such as mIRC as well. These clients usually require more knowledge of IRC to use however, I recommend you switch to them only once you get the hang of Mibbit.

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Basics & Terminology

NOTE: You NEED TO type any of the following commands in this article like instant messages on IRC. Ones that start with / are invisible and don't show in the chat window for others to see, ones that start with . do show in the chat window on the other hand.

User Types

IRC channels use a rank structure for administration and identifying users, there are 5 ranks you should know about.

SuperOps (Super Operators) Ops (Operators) and Hops (Half operators)

These users have the power to kick or ban people from the channel using commands such as .k, .kb, /kick, etc. There is a hierarchy of power here, ops can ban hops but not vice versa, superops over ops, etc. Also the various levels have different abilities in terms of setting superop/op/hop on other users. They can also turn on moderator mode, +m, on the channel, although we have never used this mode on the official IRC to date.

On mibbit, these are represented key+star, star, and half of a star respectively, although this may vary depending on the client you use for IRC.

Voice

This status allows you to speak when the channel is on moderated mode (+m), although as we never use this mode, it typically conveys status in the community without kick/ban power. This is represented by a volume symbol on IRC, although this symbol may vary depending on what client you use.

Founder

The head honcho of the channel, can override anything and cannot be taken out of power without his/her permission. exreality is the current founder of #nippon by legislative consensus.


Registering your nickname

If you find you like IRC, it is recommended that you take the time to register your nickname. This will keep people from impersonating you or using your hop/op/voice on IRC. You cannot even get these statuses without registering your nick actually. Finally, it will allow you to use a vhost, which I will speak about later.

To register, you can use the directions here. Feel free to contact me if you have further questions.
http://wiki.rizon.net/index.php?title=Register_your_nickname

A little additional help

Example Register Comman😛
/msg NickServ REGISTER thisisyourpassword random@gmail.com

Example Confirmation Comman😛
/msg NickServ CONFIRM this_is_some_code_you_got_in_an_email_addressed_to_the_one_you_used_above

After you do this to authenticate whenever you log in, type.
/msg NickServ IDENTIFY thisisyourpassword


Communicating with others privately and joining other channels

You can join channels other than #nippon by using the following command.

/join (channel name)

So, for example, if I want to join a channel called #ejapan, I would type /join #ejapan. In mibbit, this will open up another tab in the window with this chatroom.

To chat one on one with someone, simply double click their name on the user list to the right. This will open up a private chat tab with them, you can speak there.


vHosts

If you're concerned about security, it is useful to know about vhosts. You can use vhosts once you register your nickname using the above directions.

vHosts are used to block your screenname on IRC, which people can lookup by performing a whois (a type of command) on your nickname while you're logged in. Your screenname will typically indicate your isp and general geographic location. vHosts can hide this. I particularly recommend them if you're not using a residential isp (such as a college one or a business one) unless you really don't care if someone knows where you are.

To use a vhost, simply follow these directions.
http://wiki.rizon.net/index.php?title=Vhost


Bots

On IRC, there are several automated nicknames channel founders can utilize called bots. Bots can serve various functions. The most prominent ones on #nippon are...

eRepublik

Allows users to use several commands to pull up data relevant to erepublik, for example typing...

.avatar -h ahava3233

Should bring up a link to my avatar photo. There are others as well, type

.help erepublik

for more commands.

NOTE: You should register your nick to your profile if your nick is not the same as your in-game profile name, to do this, type

.regnick -i (profile number)

(Your profile number can be found at the end of your profile link. For mine for example, given my link is http://www.erepublik.com/en/citizen/profile/5765963. My number is 5765963, so I would type .regnick -i 5765963.)

War

Used for channel maintenance by the founder. This bot (which can go by various other names, although we use War on #nippon) is necessary to allow people to automatically attain op/hop/sop/voice status when logging into the channel.

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You will certainly notice other functions used by other users while you use IRC. There are also various other subcommunity and foreign erepublik channels on Rizon IRC. It is best to learn these by example and experience. The above should be enough to get you started.

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That's all for now folks. Please vote up this article if you liked it and feel free to subscribe to my personal newspaper, Gougai/号外/Extra for more of my articles. Also feel free to leave a comment, thanks!