Come one come all to the hottest discussion of Election Night 2004! Join your fellow kossacks (about 100 of them right now) in an IRC chat on Efnet in channel
#dailykos. We will be discussing up-to-the-minute exit polls and state results. With a little luck we may even be discussing a Kerry whitehouse.
For those that didn't join us during the debates or have never used IRC before, I have included instructions after the jump.
The easiest method is probably to use
Efnet's web-based client.
For windows users:
The easiest program is probably
mIRC. Download and install that program, and once you start it up it will ask for a little bit of information. Fill out the nickname you would like to use, and the name you would like people to be able to see, and go to the server tab and select an EFnet server from the dropdown box. I personally use irc.blessed.net or irc.he.net, although any of the servers are fine. If you then hit connect to server, that should work, although you can alternatively type
/server irc.blessed.net
in the main status window. You should then connect to the server, and up will pop a channel join box. Type in #dailykos and then click Join, or type
/join #dailykos
and you should be in.
For mac users:
I do not own a mac, nor have I ever tried to IRC on one, but a little bit of googling has led me to believe that the easiest to use mac IRC client is called
Snak. There is also a client called Conversation that user Swampfoot was kind enough to help write some instructions on:
This is gonna be a pretty simple glossing over, for more details, visit the Conversation Homepage at:
http://homepage.mac.com/philrobin/conversation/
Go to the above website, scroll down a page or so, and click the arrow under "1.4.2 for 10.2"
Once you download the program, you will have an icon titled "Conversation1.4.2.dmg" in the spot where your web browser downloads normally end up.
Double click it. On your desktop will appear another icon, this time titled "dossier sans titre" (?). Double click on it, and there's the program (icon titled "Conversation.") Drag it to your applications folder.
Double click on it. Up will appear a "Connection" box. Enter a nickname that you think will be unique, and 9 characters or less. No spaces allowed, but underscores (_) are ok. You should not need any password, leave that blank.
In the line where it says "Server" put in this, only because it seems to be working okay today:
efnet.demon.co.uk
If that one will not let you in, there is a page that has a list of known working servers for you to try until you find one that will let you in:
http://www.erienet.net/~circle/links.html
Once you have entered the server (leave the port box alone), click on the Connect button.
if successful, you should see a scroll of a lot of text explaining the rules for using their server. To summarize them, use common sense.
To join #dailykos (The pound sign is IRC-speak for 'Channel' which is another way of saying "chat room"), go to the File menu, choose "New Conversation", type "dailykos" into the box labeled "Channel" and hit the join button.
The channel window appears, with the list of who's already there in a pop-out panel on the right. Start talking by typing, when you're ready to send your text to the channel, hit Return.
Now you're on your own!
Once in #dailykos...
You'll see a handful of people with @'s in front of their names, those are operators who administrate the channel, change the topic, kick out rude users, etc. If the channel gets large enough and there are too many side conversations (e.g. during the debates), the operators may set the channel mode to 'moderated', preventing anyone without an @ or a + in front of their name from speaking. In that case, we will 'voice' users who are registered daily kos members (give them a + in front of their name) and allow these users to talk.
That's about all I think there is to IRC, so hopefully you'll all join us and we can celebrate a Kerry/Edwards win together!