YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

IRC is some ancient voodoo bullshit I remember rigging up as a kid when we got dial-up at my childhood home. It's a very simple chatroom of sorts, accessible both through Add-Ons like Chatzilla and through websites. I imagine they can be password-protected and a stickied post viewable by people who have signed into the forum with the password could be made. I have the computer skills of a three-footed banjo so I'm pretty useless at doing anything except setting up an IRC. I just thought it might be cool to have some sort of IM for people?

I'm totally open to being laughed at/having obvious reasons why it wouldn't work pointed out. Just a thought.

I could help with this too.

Do you just want to set up a "room" on an existing IRC server or set up our own IRC server?

Chat room type thing would be great for people who wanted or needed a more immediate "I just want to be heard and supported right now" type situation. Yes, I see the value in that here for sure, as well. Hope that the idea can be pursued!

I would also love something like this. I've talked to people about using a facebook group for chats but people are concerned about the privacy issues of using their personal profile. I have no idea about the technical issues of setting this up on the forum.

Hmm...bocephus raises a good point. I only know how to set up rooms which did the trick for us but I have no idea as to capacities/benefits of one versus the other. What are your thoughts?

There seems to be interest, which is awesome! I know I often get home from work when my girlfriend is sleeping, take off my Detroit Tigers ballcap, sit at the computer, and feel oh so lonely. It would be lovely to catch a few night-owls and tell them how the day has been. The only thing I'd be worried about are trolls, because I worry about everything. May I suggest we use this thread as a place to see if people would be interested in such a thing (as in, by leaving a message saying "I'd be interested!" or something like that)? And if we have a head-count perhaps it would be easier to choose between room and server? What say ye?

Pilot project! Buzzwords! Synergy! I don't have a career in management!

Is there a way of setting this up so that it can only be accessed by people who are members of this forum - maybe a password only posted on this thread? I live alone and have chronic insomnia and would really love to be able to just chat about random stuff any time of the day or night.

I assume there's a way of doing that. We can always PM the password amongst ourselves until it (hopefully) takes off. Alternatively, I think there's a way to hide threads to non-members on forums like this. Perhaps the password could only be seen after making an account?

I'm certainly open to suggestions. I'd love to be able to chat with people here and to have people just leave messages about how they're feeling and such. I think I remember how to create a channel but it has been a long, long time and the helpful page out of some magazine that I had as instructions is long gone. I also don't know how to password-protect them. If anyone has experience with such a thing a brief tutorial would be very much appreciated - if not, I'll do my noblest and see what sort of e-Abomination comes out!

That sounds like a great idea. Let me know if you get it up and running and I'll plug it on the show (if you like). If you'd rather keep it small and only accessible via this thread that's cool too. You might try also posting something under the Meet Up thread to get prospective participants.

Paul

Well, speak of the devil - I had just decided to look into it and there was the message telling me to go ahead!

I have created a password-protected room on ircnet. The url is here: [url]irc://ircnet/mentalpod[/url]. In order to use IRC, you need to use an add-on like Chatzilla (which is the one I use) or use a browser-based program (which I know nothing about). If you go the Chatzilla route, you will open the program to see this:

Available networks are [dalnet, efnet, freenode, hispano, ircnet, moznet, quakenet, serenia, slashnet, solidirc, undernet, webbnet].

Click on ircnet, then type /join #mentalpod Happy (Happy being the password) to get on. Feel free to promote this on the show - if you get anyone with more experience than I with running these things I am more than happy to hand over the reins. At any rate, there it is. I hope to see people!

Thanks for setting that up. I think what I'll do is promote the link via Twitter and FB and in the show notes of the episode I mention it on since giving the instructions and url out verbally probably won't stick with anyone. They'll want to see this post anyway. Will they need to be a forum member to join the chat group? Can I call it an IRC chat group? Maybe you could come up with a couple sentence pitch to describe what it is and who is invited?

Paul