Shareaza

Let's share a few thoughts about Shareaza's IRC support:

At this moment Shareaza only supports language channels to be listed: (#Shareaza, #Shareaza-Admin, -Chat, -dev, -Afrikaans, -Arabic, -Chinese, -Croatian, -Czech, -Dutch, -Finish, -French, -German, -Greek, -Hebrew, -Hungarian, -Italian, -Japanese, -Lithuanian, -Norwegian, -Polish, -Portuguese, -Russian, -Spanish, -Swedish)

These channels have been hardcoded in the source.
I would like to ask all of you your opinion on the following statements:

1. Should language channels be displayed in the corresponding language or the language set in Shareaza?

IMO, the corresponding language would be better.
Thanks to kevogod for bringing this up.

2. Should Shareaza take care of joining the users in the appropriate channel?

At the moment P2PChat takes care of force-joining language users in the appropriate channel:
First, the server does a reverse DNS lookup of the IPaddress. For instance 147.65.5.4 will translate to dhcp-147-65-5-4.impa.br. Next, the part after the last dot is chopped off, and used to determine what country the user is in (br). Last, the user will be joined to #shareaza-portuguese.
However, not all IP's can be translated this way: 83.223.160.2 will translate to 83-223-160-2.cpe.netmadeira.com which is not a country TLD. In this case, they will be joined to #shareaza-chat.

Shareaza could handle this (better):
First, The external IP would be fetched from a remote server (a PHP page on SF perhaps). Next, the IP is matched against Shareaza's already implemented IP-to-country database. Last, the user would be joined in the correct language channel. The problem here is that not every country has a matching language channel, and people might speak a different language in other parts of the country. If this would be integrated, an advanced option should exist to turn auto-joining that language channel off.

The easiest of all:
Adding a language code (based on the language set in Shareaza) to the ident of the user after which the server can determine if the user can be sajoin'ed somewhere.

Thanks to Datz for bringing this up.

2. Should users be allowed to set up their own language channel?

Recently a new language channel was opened by a couple of regulars from the french channel, #shareaza-arabic. IMO it's great regulars set up their own channel to help others in this language. The problem here might be that this new language channel is "unofficial" and we're not in control of it and they could just use the name of the language to get it listed in the channels-box.
Thanks to zigotozor for noticing this.

3. Should users be allowed to set up their own personal channel?

Encouraging users to set up their own channel could give a boost to the community. These unofficial channels could then be listed after all the language and help channels and/or in a different color and/or in a different box and/or if it's enabled in the settings. The problem is that #shareaza-warez or #shareaza-porn would be difficult to stop, but is that a good argument since they're unofficial anyway?
We can't control what's on the P2PChat network, but we can contol what appears in the channels box. Channels which match against a badwords filter could be blocked. Worst case scenario an ircop would remove them.
Another idea is to list all channels on the network instead of just the #Shareaza*-channels.

- Maybe there's a possibility to have rooms approved before they can be created.
- Maybe some plugin should be used to handle IRC.

Seems nobody has an opinion on this one.

I personally think a /list option to find other channels would be the best way to go.

How about joining them based on their language settings? This method wouldn't need to involve any complicated IP address checks.

1. YES. I understand 5 languages, so i'm always on english, russian and polish. In exUSSR countries many people know more than 2 languages.
2. First Shareaza can try language that user selected. If user use russian localisation in Shareaza - he automatically goes to #shareaza-russian.
and also kevogod sad on many times on previos incarnations of forum that uses IP to country is stupidity.
3. Is there so many people on channels #shareaza-warez or #shareaza-porn ? My guess - 0. (The only exception - #shareaza-BORG )
And anyway - any users at any time can create 666 empty #shareaza-whatever rooms on any IRC server

How about to create for all those 100 to 200 settings #Shareaza-beginner or #Shareaza-introduction channel? Adding them to any existing would be hmmm not quite comfortable. And Shareaza client could inform about list of other languages channels on enter. Or set something like auto command "peerbot pt sp fr pl en" etc. - so it would show how to join other channel. So all non-defined could appear there? (to be op there - that will be a challange... ) .

It shouldn't be based on locale settings. That is far to many languages to have channels for and it would be nigh impossible to moderate. Just base it on the 30 or so selectable languages in Shareaza. If an end user can't speak those languages, they won't be using Shareaza in the first place.

So the standard ident of the raza's could be set to e.g. "raza_pt" or "raza_nl". From there the server can determine if a matching language channel exists, and join the user in the appropriate channel.
I'd also like to encourage the idea of letting users create their own personal channel. These unofficial channels could be shown in a separate list or at the bottom of the current list/in another color.

Why can't the users just select the channel(s) from a list? Many people outside the ex-USSR can communicate with multiple languages as well, so an invisible redirect to a specific language channel might just uselessly fragment the community.

IIRC the irc opers made it that way so there wouldn't be just a ton of users idling on the server that aren't in any channel.
What the difference is whether they're idling in a channel or not, escapes me atm.

Well, if they're idling on server but not in channel, they will probably never talk and might not even know how to get in channel. But if they are idling in channel, they might look at the conversation in chat text and say hey I want to put my 2 cents in.

I think everyone should be joined to a channel according to his language settings (if channel non-existant or empty, the user in question should be joined to #Shareaza-chat instead)...

... or that at first IRC connection, a box should pop up, asking for the default channel to join to.

Shareaza can open more then one channel. 1 Shareaza - low traffic and help 2 Shareaza-chat all and nothing 3 Shareaza-(national language) by language settings if such channel exist on main list so have op or ops etc. I think this would not be to tiring server, and would promote national languages channels to improve and grow with number of users.
What do you think about?

Sounds like a reasonable default to me. But I never use IRC, so no idea how it would work in practice.