Kiwi Biker forums FAQ

You will need to go to http://java.sun.com/ and download the latest installer (in the menu on the right side). Grab it, close you open browsers, run it, restart your browser.

You're obviously a highly intelligent and resourceful person so I won't need to simplify things like for an IE user. In the Address Bar of Firefox type in: about:plugins Scroll down until you find the info about the Java Plugin. Above each one you'll see the name of a file. Remove those files from c:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\plugins then restart Firefox. If it doesn't work, you missed some.

Use the tab key to complete nicknames so you don't have to type them out in full. Type a few letters of a persons name and press tab. You can use any amount of letters. Pressing tab repeatedly cycles through the names that start with those letters.

Change to the Light Universe skin and rejoin the chat

To change your nickname there's a small box at the bottom right of the irc chat window. Type your new nick in there and press Enter Alternatively if you use /nick - type a nickname after this command, and your nickname will be changed to that.

If you click on that a list will appear that will show you the other rooms that are available on the server. To join another room, just double click on it's name and a new tab will be created that shows you in the other room.

At the bottom right of the chat window there's is a panel that has a number of different colours and a couple of "a"'s. The colours will change the colour of any text you type in. The "a"'s change the font style, the top "a" will bold all of your text. The bottom "a" will underline all of your text.

The "Status" window is the status of your connection to the server. Any messages the server sends you will be in that window. You can ignore it 99% of the time.

The "Public" row shows you all of the rooms that you are in The "Private" row shows you which people you are having private/1 on 1 conversations with. With both Public and Private the buttons will be Red if someone has said something

They're room admins. They can do various things like kick/ban people, change the rooms topic etc.

tossbot is the room gaurdian. He doesn't actually do anything that you will be aware of. But he does ensure that nobody is able to take over the entire room and boot people out etc. Just pat him on the head once in a while.

The server the chat room is on hosts many people from all over the place. Those that you see and don't recognize from kb are most likely people on the server who are being nosey. They're not bots or nasties or anything like that. Just people who aren't actually from kb.

If SpankMe doesn't want people who aren't registered members of kb in there then something *may* be done, but until he says so, they're welcome. However, even if SpankMe doesn't want them, there's no way in the known universe to stop server operators from being in there, short of taking to their computers with a welding torch.

They're the people that ensure the whole server runs smoothly and that wars don't break out. They're easily the most powerful and capable people you'll find in irc. They can ban you/your nick permanently or even ban the chat room. So if anyone is getting out of control, I suggest the kb people sort them out before opers get involved cos shit happens when the big sticks come out.

Mental-Trousers, Catnip, Gwinch are the regulars. There's Otter (server owner), Cyberbiker and Pops (2 of the locals and slightly deranged with it). There are others but you're unlikely to ever come across them.

Can't happen. NOBODY can get your email address/personal details from the irc server unless you specify that it should be public in the options. If you're using mIRC and you're not an experienced user of mIRC then please don't. You should be worried about it revealing personal info like email, so use the java client instead. I strongly urge any women especially to use the java client as it doesn't give ANY info up. mIRC has to be carefully set up so it won't show anything personal. Just don't use it. It's a feckin headache and I hate it. The pjirc client is excellent and is definitely what I recommend to people now instead of mIRC.

Until a nickname is registered, anybody can use it. Just because it's yours on kb doesn't mean you have exclusive rights to it UNLESS you register your nickname in irc. To do that you have to do the following: /msg nickserver register An email will be sent to you to confirm you are who you say you are. Click on the link it contains. Every time you connect to the irc server you will need to identify yourself, otherwise the server will force you to change your nick after 60 seconds /msg nickserv identify

Occassionally the java client has a brain fart and it will connect to irc twice without disconnecting in between. So, it isn't someone else stealing your nicname, it's actually a ghost. If it happens, it's nothing to worry about. An oper can kick the ghost or you can restart your browser.

Don't be a dickhead. Someone will remove the ban ....... sometime. Bans on the irc server double each time you get banned. The first ban will be for 1 day, then 2 days, 4 days, 8 days .... until it's virtually permanent. Don't get banned. It's bad.

Excessive spamming, impersonating someone else. The rest are the same as on the forums, excessive personal abuse etc.

Probably your connection or ISP. Unless Clear Net get disconnected from the rest of the planet, the server is up 24/7

There's a lot of people who lurk. They pretty much just hang out there and check back every now and then to see who's turned up. Most are busy doing other stuff and will happily join in any conversation that pops up. So hang around and see what happens.

The server rejects usernames that have a space in them. This shouldn't be happening. Contact an admin.

Click the "Font" button down beside the colours. A new window will pop up. Change the number in the 2nd box and click "Ok"

irc isn't part of vBulletin and runs on an entirely seperate server so extracting that information is very difficult. It may be looked at in the future but it's a lot of work and probably isn't possible.

As mentioned previously irc is run on a totally seperate machine. It isn't possible to display a list of people in the chat room at present. This may be looked at in the future.

This is called an action in irc. If I do the following in irc: /me adjusts himself you will see: * Mental-Trousers adjusts himself So it is how you can show that you are doing something rather than saying something.

Either click the little x up in the top right corner or /quit - This will disconnect you. Type something after the command, to leave that as a departing message

/whois - type a nick after this, and you will get a short run down of their details, such as name (usually their kb name), their (masked) ip address, what channels they're in, if they're an admin and most importantly how long since they last did anything irc, eg Idle: 54 minutes 43 seconds

/ping - again, type a nick after this, and you will ping them, and get a time for how long the person's computer took to reply. If the time is large then (measured in seconds) then that persons connection to the irc server is dodgy

/ignore - type a nick after this to put them on your ignore list. You won't see anything they have to say at all. Unfortunately this isn't persistant if you're using the java client on kb so next time you go back in you'll need to put that person on ignore again.

/unignore - type a nick after this to take someone off your ignore list. Their lines will now be shown

/join #xxxx - where xxxx is a room you wish to join. If that room doesn't exist it will be automatically created for you!! You can then have a private chat with several people (whereas a private chat is only between 2 people)

Either double click on their name in the list of names on the right or type in /query - followed by their nickname. A new window will be created and their name will be on a bottom below the chat window. It's just like being in the chat room but there's only the 2 of you there.