Mass notice
From Blitzed
Contents |
[edit] The Art Of Mass-Notices
[edit] (that includes mass-messages too)
As opers on this here IRC network you have been granted the ability to send notices and messages to large sections of the network at once. This document tells you how and why you might want to.
[edit] Why?
A couple of reasons:
- To alert users on a specific server that something which will affect their ircing is about to happen, e.g. their client server is about to be split/restarted/whatever.
- To alert users on the whole network that something is going to happen that will affect their IRC experience, e.g. a large hub being rerouted.
- For fun!
Yes, you can send mass-notices for fun, but please don't be too annoying with this. Some grumpy users dislike getting messages from us ircops unless absolutely necessary, and they will complain about it if you misuse this. Don't forget that you can always use /wallops to send a message to all opers plus users who set umode +w.
[edit] Who can do this?
Any global oper can send a mass-notice. Any local oper can send a mass-notice to the users of his server.
[edit] Mass-messages and mass-notices
Although you will mostly see mass-notices being used, and any time someone says "message all the users" they generally mean "send a mass-notice to all the users", it is possible to do mass-messages with /msg.
I have no idea what legitimate reason there is for sending mass-messages. As a rule of thumb, never use /msg for mass-messaging: it will be sent as an actual PRIVMSG and on most clients that will open a whole new window. Confusing and annoying for many users. So stick to /notice.
The smart ones amongst you will have realised by now that if /msg works then that means everything that is implemented as a PRIVMSG will also work. Yes, this means you can do CTCP, actions, DCC and similar things to the entire network at once. Since this is generally stupid and annoying I will not go into details. Users tend to not like it if you DCC CHAT the whole net.
[edit] Single-server mass-notices
Example:
/notice $yourserver.*.blitzed.org messages goes here
The .*. bit just lets you miss out part of the server name. This will send a notice to all users on yourserver.*. It will probably show up like any other /notice to them.
[edit] Global notices
If possible, use OperServ GLOBAL for this:
/os global message goes here
If services isn't linked though,
/notice $*.blitzed.org message goes here
[edit] Other mass-messaging tools
Sending these notices and messages isn't always appropriate. Here are some alternatives:
- If you want to speak to all currently connected opers, use /chatops. /wallops isn't always appropriate because users can see it (although in practice hardly any users ever bother to set +w these days).
- You can use /locops to send a message just to opers on your own server.
- A large concentration of oper types can usually be found in #blitzed!
- If you're a user reading this, do not hassle us in #blitzed. Go to #help!