WikiFur:IRC

From WikiFur, the furry encyclopedia.

WikiFur's IRC channel (chat room) serves as a place for general furry chit-chat (though you may find more people on Anthrochat or FurNet), as well as a method of quickly notifying admins about vandalism in progress, or a convenient way to ask questions. There is also a recent changes notifier bot in #wikifur-edits.

[edit] How to join

For advanced users:

irc.freenode.net #wikifur

For others:

You can either use the standard Wikia web client in your web browser or install a specialized chat program called an IRC client. These are available for a variety of platforms.

[edit] Web client

Wikia has a CGI:IRC gateway for #wikifur that lets you join the chat room from a normal web page. Just put in your username and choose "#wikifur" (selected by default) from the drop-down list.
Your web browser may be preconfigured to open IRC links in some IRC client, so you can try clicking this link:

irc://irc.freenode.net/wikifur

(Note: Firefox users will need to install the ChatZilla extension in order to use IRC through the browser.)

[edit] Windows

Babbel This is small and easy to use. All function. -Amiga_Nut
mIRC is the classic Windows IRC client. Main drawbacks of mIRC are the fact that it's not free and that the configuration options are waaay more extensive than a lot of users are used to.
Trillian handles IRC. It's a little complicated to set up, but if you don't want to use the very easy CGI:IRC linked by Angela, then Trillian is a handy program to have anyway for the other things it does.
Miranda IM - a multi-client, like Trillian, but rather minimalist and open source.
HydraIRC- A free newcomer to the Windows IRC client scene.

[edit] Linux

Pidgin is a multi-client that comes preinstalled with Ubuntu and several other Linux distributions.
Irssi is a CLI client that's plain, simple, and very extensible with scripts. The learning curve is a little steep, but once you learn to use it, it's very intuitive.

[edit] Mac

Babbel This is small and easy to use. All function. -Amiga_Nut
Snak handles IRC rather nicely, and is one of the few Mac-only clients that still work flawlessly.
Colloquy is stable and has many features like tabbed windows, buddy list, etc.
IRCLe (shareware) is scriptable with AppleScript, can support multiple channels and servers, and up to ten distinct connections at once.

[edit] Crossplatform

ChatZilla is an extension for the Mozilla Firefox web browser.
JWChat - had some script errors in Firefox, but clicked "Stop script" and it worked fine after that.
X-Chat is perhaps the most well-known IRC client for Linux, included into nearly every distribution, which has recently grown in popularity on Windows as well. Note that the official Windows version (as opposed to Linux) is shareware, but unofficial free Windows builds are available, for example, here.

[edit] Setup instructions

To log in, you need to configure your client. After you log in, it is rather straightforward. The parameters are:

Server: irc.freenode.net
Channel: #wikifur

Most IRC clients, such as mIRC, Miranda, Trillian, and X-Chat, have "Freenode" in the default network list, you only need to select it. After you are connected to the server, type /join #wikifur in the reply box and press Enter.