"I went into the chat room and
there was no one around. When do people usually show up?"
Usually in the evenings around 7pm Pacific time, the crowd begins to
trickle in. The chat room is open 24 hours a day, however, there may not always be
an operator around. And on rare occasions, the chat room may be totally empty during
prime-time hours.
"Do users have to pay to access this
chat room?"
No! This is a free
service. It's just a "social hangout" for amateur and professional bowlers
of all ages and abilities, industry workers and to talk about bowling and other shared
interests.
"Okay, I went to the chat room, and
there were tons of people in there. No one was talking about bowling. Doesn't
anyone talk about bowling in there?"
Yes! People talk about
bowling. If you have a bowling question or want to talk about bowling, feel free to
interrupt. Since it is a "bowlers chat room" and not just a "bowling
chat room", topic drifts are common. It is a friendly and relaxed atmosphere,
so speak up! No one is going to yell at you for wanting to drift the topic back to
bowling.
"There are people in the chat room
and they are being rude, obscene and disruptive. There is no operator around to
throw him out. What can be done to keep him from coming back?"
Our chat room policy is pretty
simple... "Mind your manners". Unfortunately, some people can't
control themselves and it happens. Go to the status screen and type /whois
<username>. Without the < > this information to us and
we will try to take care of the issue promptly. Write down the information, it should look
like this - information may vary:
<username> is
~bowlersch@something.something.something.something * http://www.nowhere.com
<username> on #Bowlers-chat
<username> using something.SuperChat.org SuperLink's IRC server
"How do I tell who is an Operator
and who is not?"
An Op is a person with the @ (at)
symbol before their name.
"I have WebTV and cannot access the
chat room, how can I get to the chat room?"
Sorry! WebTV has limitations
and there's nothing we can do about it. We do not have a WebTV compatible code for
the chat room.
"I have an old browser that does not
support JAVA, or an old system that cannot take the latest browser. How can I get to
the chat room?"
Go to the Help! section from the
main chat page and visit the section regarding "Stand Alone Software". We
do not provide technical support for these software packages but we have created a simple
installation guide for mIRC software. Please follow the instructions from there and
if you have additional questions, please contact the software developer at their
respective sites. Their urls are linked to the download buttons.
"What is the difference between the
Stand Alone IRC Software and the Java Applet?"
The Stand alone software packages
are shareware (try before you buy). They allow you to access the chat room without
having all of these horrid little Java Applet windows open all the time. Java
applets sometimes eats up system resources and any one of the stand alones that we have
listed uses less memory, doesn't require your browser to be open and has a few extra
little perks. But if you're just fine with the Java applet, then by all means, stick
with it. Some video cards have conflicts with Java applets and Netscape
Communicator/Navigator. If you are experiencing hardware issues and you are using
Netscape, contact the software manufacturer or download the latest version if you haven't
done so already. Older versions of Netscape had a horrid little Java bug (sorry,
undocumented feature - they're not really bugs according to technical support) and it
would puke every time it spawned a Java applet with some video cards.
"I tried to access the chat room but
I can't connect. How can I get to the chat room?"
Sometimes there may be slight server
issues which may mean that the IRC server might be down due to net burps. Try a
second time and if it is still acting flaky, try again a little later.