Sorry for the repost, but the diaries move so fast these days...
Once again we will be running an IRC chatroom
live during the debate. In case you didn't join us last thursday, we had almost 200 people discussing the debate in real time. It was fairly chaotic, but I think overall it worked pretty well. The chatroom is still around, and if you want to get up-to-the-minute coverage from your own fellow kossacks, as well as see links to polls/diaries/stories, come join us tonight.
Following on the success of the last debate, this debate is
even more important. We absolutely must do whatever we can to counter the Republican spin machine, that unfortunately is wide awake and ready to pounce. This is why, in an effort to harness the speed and power of the dkos community, I have set up a chatroom on the IRC network
EFnet. The channel is
#dailykos, for those of you familiar with IRC, and there were about 175 or more people there on thursday. Don't miss out! With this, we can debunk Cheney's lies in real time.
I had not been too impressed with the Kerry war room, although last week's debates really gave me some hope that they now know what they are doing. Regardless, I think that we should take matters into our hands, as best we can. We must do our part! By employing a grassroots operation to define the talking points, we can set the tone to ensure that Edwards walks away from this having completely owned Cheney. Let's play the ball on our court!
If you already have an IRC client installed (such as Chatzilla), simply click
here.
Read on for more information on IRC and getting it set up...
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 once again become an effective rapid response team for Kerry/Edwards.