Harry Potter Wiki:IRC

The Harry Potter Wiki IRC channel is a chat room provided by Wikia for discussion. The channel serves as a place for general chit-chat about the Harry Potter Wiki, as well as a method of quickly notifying administrators about vandalism or asking questions.

What #wikia-harrypotter is: What #wikia-harrypotter is not:
 * A place to chat about the Harry Potter Wiki
 * A place to discuss Harry Potter
 * A place to "hang out"
 * A role-playing channel

Remember, however, that any "official" business that comes up, even as simple as users discussing site improvements or whether information in an article is factual, overrules any other conversations occuring.

Rules
The rules for #wookieepedia IRC are simple:
 * 1) Don't be rude. You will never be asked to be "nice," and personal attacks are unpreventable in IRC. But as a guideline, don't go out of your way to irritate others. Vicious abuse is grounds for sanctions.
 * 2) 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.
 * 3) Real-world politics and/or religion may only be discussed with unanimous consent. If someone doesn't want to talk about them, drop the subject.
 * 4) Harry Potter Wiki IRC'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, but keep it within reason.
 * 5) No spamming. The meaning should be obvious. Don't say the same thing six times because no one is responding to you. Don't keep yammering on about a subject nobody cares about.
 * 6) No role-playing.
 * 7) Ops=admins.

The standard sanctions for dealing with violators of IRC policies are as follows:
 * 1) Warning. Directed at the violator by an operator.
 * 2) Kicking. Should only occur when policy violations, spamming, trolling, and similar transgressions are sufficiently obvious and continuous that all operators agree.
 * 3) Channel mute. All users are voiced except the violator, allowing said violator to grow frustrated and quit on his own.
 * 4) Kickbanning.

Joining
If you do not have an IRC client, or have no idea what this means, then you can use Wikia's web interface to login.

If you already have an IRC client installed you can click here to access the IRC channel.

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 for the their IRC channel's at irc.wikia.com that lets you join the chat room from a normal web page. Just put in your username and choose "#wikia-harrypotter" from the drop-down list.

Crossplatform

 * Opera web browser has a built-in IRC client.
 * ChatZilla is an extension for the Mozilla Firefox web browser. (This is by far the easiest client if you use Firefox.)
 * 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.
 * Pidgin is a multi-client that comes preinstalled with Ubuntu and several other Linux distributions and is available for Windows.

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.
 * Trillian handles IRC. It's a little complicated to set up, but if you don't want to use the very easy CGI:IRC linked by Angela, then Trillian is a handy program to have anyway for the other things it does.
 * Miranda IM - a multi-client, like Trillian, but rather minimalist and open source.

Linux

 * 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.

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.

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: #wikia-harrypotter

Your web browser may be preconfigured to open IRC links in some IRC client, so you can try clicking this link:


 * irc://irc.freenode.net/wikia-harrypotter

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 #wikia-harrypotter in the reply box and press Enter.