DALnetizen - Becoming an IRCop

Becoming an IRCop

The sort of questions which DALnet staff can be guaranteed to get year in and year out are "How do you choose IRCops?", and "How do I become one?".

In an attempt to shed some light into the murky world of DALnet IRCops, we followed Damien, a new Oper on the tiscali.dal.net server, through the process of turning from user to IRCop.

"What struck me most about Damien was his friendly chat", says curve, the AA of tiscali.dal.net "Well, that and his dark good looks..."

Damien impressed Admins with his friendliness
Friendly user

"We need more talkative IRCops on this network, so I invited him to be an IRCop"

With an offer of an O:line under his belt, Damien then had to ensure that he forefilled the other requirements of being an IRCop, such as signing up to the appropriate mailing lists

**Signing up for mailing lists on www.dal.net**

The next stage in any new recruit's life is to be trained in the arts of being an IRCop. For this they attend classes with the Oper Training Team.

"Well he came to us for training recently and went through all the usual tests and instructions" Luscious, the Oper Training team leader, told us "He seemed to absorb it all well and had a wonderfully sharp eye and fast reactions."

Having passed his training, Damien was now a fully fledged DALnet IRCop and, with his access added, soon went to work setting /kill's on anyone who broke DALnet rules....or who owned a cat.

**Doing your first /kill can be scarey**

"I am so proud of him", says curve "Damien displays all the qualities I look for in an IRCop and if he doesn't know something, he just wings it. No, he really hasn't put a foot wrong...well, apart from that little incident when he /kill'd Taz..."

We later found out that the incident curve referred to was actually a bit of a misunderstanding. It seems that the DALnet CEO, Taz, made a passing comment about liking his birds to have a big breast which Damien took the wrong way. When we talked to Damien about this incident he said he didn't have time to comment and had to fly.

**Damien is contrite after accidentally autokilling all of AOL**

We caught up with Damien again three months later to see how he was getting on and found that he was now totally adjusted to life as a DALnet IRCop. He has mastered the art of setting /away and auto-responding to all messages with "Please go to #operhelp for help".

**Damien now an experienced CSop on duty**