RuneScape:Off-site/IRC

What is IRC?
IRC, which stands for Internet Relay Chat, is a method of chatting in groups via "IRC servers", which receive messages and send them to the channels or people who are the recipients. It is commonly and widely used (mainly via IRC clients such as mIRC or X-chat) to chat with a group of people - the number of which can be very high, even per channel - about "stuff".

How do I join it?
Well, you don't just "join IRC" like you do a wiki or a game. There are hundreds of IRC servers out there, but we have our chatroom on the Freenode server - that is, irc.freenode.net. In order to make it easy to join the Wikia-related channels on Freenode, Wikia has a chat client built-into the website, which can be found at irc.wikia.com. In order to join the RuneScape Wiki chatroom, go to the aforementioned link and select "#rswiki" from the dropdown list of channels. At the moment, we are somewhere at the bottom of the list. Then enter a username - preferrably your RuneScape Wiki username - and click "Login".

Now, depending on your internet connection and what username you put in, you may get certain errors. One of the most common is being "stuck" on the Status page - the page of the client where you see your connection status and other server stuff. A common source for this problem is having entered a username that someone - anyone on the server - is already using currently. To solve this, use the "/nick" command - see the Commands section.

Registering
On Freenode, there is a service called "NickServ", which handles the usage of nicknames, most notably registered ones. In order to register your nickname, follow the steps below:


 * 1) Make sure you are connected properly, and are using the nickname you wish to register.
 * 2) Switch to the Status window, and type, without the quotes, "/ns register password", where password is a word that you will use to "log in" with. If NickServ fails to register, it may be because you left out the password, or because the nickname is already registered. Simply choose another nickname and repeat.
 * 3) Now, type "/ns identify password", where password is the password you previously supplied.

From now on, whenever you connect back to Freenode, simply enter "/ns identify password" to identify yourself with the server again.

Commands
There are a multitude of commands that can be used, from "emoting" to changing your nick.


 * /nick nickname - Changes your current nickname to the provided nickname. This fails if another user is already using that nickname. Also, your registration DOES NOT change over to the new nickname.
 * /join #channel - Opens a new chat page containing the provided channel. You MUST include the # before the channel name. This may fail if the channel requires a key to enter - in that case, if you know the key, just type it in after the channel name in the command - or it may fail because you have been banned from the channel.
 * /part #channel - Causes you to leave the provided channel. In the Wikia-supplied client, you should manually close the actual chat page using the grey X in the top-right of the page. Don't click the RED X that closes your internet browser!
 * /me emote - Causes you to send to the current channel an emote, along the lines of "Mynick emote". Example: if I am Oddlyoko, "/me dances!" writes "Oddlyoko dances!"