Forum:SH Archive/Wookieepedia IRC cloaks

Hey, everyone.

For some time, months now actually, I've been thinking about the possibility of requesting Wookieepedia-specific IRC cloaks within the freenode network; however, things kept coming up that pulled my thoughts away from pursuing it :P Recently, though, a friend of mine from Uncyclopedia advised me that their wiki community had been able to successfully request the creation of their cloaks for use in IRC from Wikia. Now, for a number of reasons, not the least of which are that we're one of the largest Wikia wikis, and also of our long history with Wikia, I'd like to ask the Wookieepedia community if this is something that we want -- more specifically, I'm asking our IRC and #wookieepedia regulars is if this is something that they want. I've already spoken at length about this with my fellow administrators via our email list, and those who have answered have responded positively towards it and thus the possibility of creating a stronger identity for our users in IRC.

For those of you who don't know what a IRC cloak is, their purpose is two-fold: first, their chief purpose to essentially hide your IP address and/or other sensitive IRC details which would otherwise be viewable by other IRC users; secondly, a cloak helps identify an IRC user with a specific project. To illustrate this point, if I were to login to IRC and not enter in my network-specific password, my login information may look like this:

@11.111.111.1-my-service-provider

Now, with my cloak turned on, it hides my address while identifying me to other IRC users as a member of a specific project. My IRC cloak on freenode currently looks like this:

@wikia/Greyman

As you can see in the example above, my cloak consists of @wikia (thus identifying me as a Wikia user) and then my wiki username, which is Greyman. So, what I'm proposing is to ask Wikia to do for us what they have done for Uncyclopedia, another of their largest wikis -- create wiki-specific cloaks, which when turned on, would look like this:

@wookieepedia/your-wiki-username

So, thoughts? Comments? If you're an IRC user and mainly a user of Wookieepedia, is this something that you would like to have the option for? I personally would love to have this available to our users, mainly because we are an enormous community, yes within the larger Wikia-community, but a large community within our own right. Having our own cloak would help identify those Wookieepedia users who want it as being a "Wookieepedia user" while they are in IRC, just like those users who contribute to many Wikia wikis find pride in their @wikia cloaks, or a user of Uncyclopedia finds pride in their @uncyclopedia cloak. Personally, I see this as a positive for all involved, including Wikia, even though some of us (like myself) would be handing in our @wikia cloaks for Wookieepedia ones. Why? Because it helps create an even more diverse wiki for Wikia, as well as her users, and offer more options to those users who consider themselves "Wookieepedians." Now, if you're not an IRC user, than this decision won't affect you in any way -- this is strictly for IRC, and won't really have any affect on the site. Note, however, that if this is approved (just like Uncyc's was), than any user of Wookieepedia who meets certain editing criteria (which will be established by myself and other #wookieepedia operators at a later date and time) will be eligible to request a cloak for their use in IRC on the freenode network. For example, to be eligible for a @wikia specific cloak, you have to be a registered Wikia user with at least 50 edits somewhere on Wikia.

Note: I don't really think this requires a vote, due to the nature of this thread, but if we determine that there should be one, than I have no problem moving this to a CT and opening it up for one :)

Anyways, I look forward to hearing the communities thoughts on this so that I can forward our intent onto Wikia Staff :) Cheers, Greyman ( Talk ) 19:31, 23 October 2008 (UTC)