We really appreciate everyone who hangs out in #help and is eager to try to help others but there are some instances when you shouldn't get involved and instead allow the Sundiver IRC Staff and official helpers (halfops and higher) deal with the problem.

Some examples of serious issues where it would be best for you not to get involved would be anything involving physical threats against others, child predators, suicide threats, or anything that could affect the personal safety of any user.

Under these circumstances and any other serious problem focus on getting a staffer's attention and then remain absolutely silent so the staff can completely focus on helping those in need.

You also don't want to take the chance of giving anyone incorrect or conflicting information.

On Sundiver IRC all our users' IP addresses as well as host masks are pseudonymized upon connection to prevent others from determining your IP address or full hostmask.

Only Sundiver IRC staff and you can see your own IP address and full host. So when you type /whois <yournick> you will see it. However, when others whois you they will only see the pseudonymized IP address or hostmask.

Other users may still see your ISP (e.g: SIN-4EF85EF.dip.telekom.net) but they won't be able to determine your IP address and make a direct connection to your computer from the information they get from your /whois.

Do not be tricked into allowing others to see your IP address or full host:

• Never type /mode <yournick> -x as it will allow others to see your IP address or full host mask.
• Do not accept DCC chat or file transfers requests with users you don't know as either will allow a direct connection to your IP and will allow that user to determine your IP.

There are many means you can take to help grow your chatroom. Some of thise might be:

1. The first thing to recommend is to do a /list when you connect to Sundiver IRC and see what some of the larger channels on the network are and join them. Of the channels you join from the /list become acquainted with the current chatters in the room. Ideally you want to become friends with these people so they will want hang out in your channel too.
2. Do not spam your chat at any point. You do not want to come across as spammer because that automatically give you a bad reputation and you will never get anyone in there or worse it may be closed down due to spamming.
3. If you have become friendly with someone on Sundiver IRC and would like to invite them to your channel you can use the /invite command (/invite <nick> <#chatroom>). Note: Please do not use this command to spam or flood users with invites. If we receive reports that you are doing it we will be forced to look into the issue and possibly close your channel down after several complaints and warnings.
4. If you have a website: use it. There are numerous ways on placing a chat widget no your website like the Mibbit Widget.
5. If you have a twitter account: use it. Share your chatroom's name and our address: irc.sundiver.org so people can come find and join you.

These are some common ways to promote your chatroom on Sundiver IRC.

You can easily auto join channels when you connect to Sundiver IRC using a registered nickname. Once you have registered your nickname with NickServ and have identified with /msg NickServ IDENTIFY <password> you can use the commands to add a specific channel to your list of channels to join upon connecting to the Sundiver IRC Network.

• /msq NickServ AJOIN ADD <#channelname>
  For example, if you wanted to add #interstellar to your auto join list you would type: /msq NickServ AJOIN ADD #interstellar.
• If you want to remove a channel from your auto join list, it.s just as easy. To delete a channel from your auto join list use the following command:
  /msq NickServ AJOIN DEL <#channelname>
  For example, if you wanted to delete #interstellar from your auto join list you would type: /msg NickServ AJOIN DEL #interstellar

For further information about NickServ take a look at the service documentation under Services or drop by our #help channel, asking a staffer.