Channel History - as told by JoeyQ

DALnet #Windows95 started in late 1996 as a vacant channel, founded by the user James_Bond. With no plans in operating the channel, he gave me founding rights, and I never saw him again. It was my hope to make this channel a place of open discussion and help for topics including and related to Microsoft Windows95, as well as better understand the operating system and computing myself. In an attempt to string together the various Win95-related channels on the network, I offered their various operators to frequent #Windows95 and help operate it. Slowly the channel grew a steady operator and user base, with ten users at any given time seeming very populated. Then soon came the channel's big bang.

Sometime in early 1997, I sent an e-mail to Khaled Mardam-Bey — the author of the most popular IRC client mIRC — requesting that #Windows95 be placed in the default channel list that comes with the program. Trying to get out channel alongside popular channel entries at the time such at #funfactory or #winsock, I hoped to bring more traffic into the channel. I never recieved a reply of acknowledgement by e-mail; however, when the next mIRC version was released on April 2nd, 1997, #Windows95 was on the default channel list on this major release of version 5.0. In the coming weeks, the channel population had literally exploded.

During the coming months, operators were being added regularly, the weekly Sunday op meeting was formed, channel rules were solidified, and a need for structure in channel operation arised. I named one of my first operators, SithLord, as co-founder to assist in channel matters during times I'm logged off. To stem channel issues from myself to the channel's super operators, the Vouch System was created, creating structure among the channel operators.

As an experiment in late '97, I wrote a bot named TechBot coded with simple channel management functions. The bot was opped, and grew into a channel project. Soon the bot was renamed WinBot, and became an icon in #Windows95. It featured amatuer AI that simply responded to certain words and phrases like 'hello', a simple news displayer for article submissions by ops, a partyline similar to an Eggdrop bot, a telnet console for remote administration, AutoVoice, channel rules relaying, a 'lastseen' list, and many channel management and miscellaneous functions. With contributions and support from DarkSkye and DrWatson32/ChrisC along with hosting by flec, the bot became a channel success — several incarnations of this first version of WinBot served the channel for several years.

During the summer of '98, I had went on a month's vacation away from my computer. Little did I realize that my nickname would expire during this time; NickServ has a timer set for any registered nickname to expire in thirty days of inactivity. ChanServ also has a limitation: if the founder's nickname is unregistered for any reason, the channel is unregistered. Thus, both my nickname and #Windows95 became unregistered, much to the surprise of everyone. One of the channel operators, ulairi, then registered the channel and thus became channel founder. Over the next month, many channel rules were changed, and WinBot was replaced by an Eggdrop bot run by ulairi. After unrest from channel operators and claims of lack in time, ulairi resigned and turned over founder status back to me.

By late '99 my participation in the channel had shrunk to nil. With DanTana going about the role as co-founder and my long absence from the channel, I decided to give him the channel as founder, and I resigned to AOP status, and pretty much disappeared from the channel until early 2002. During my absence, the channel gained support from DALnet, and became an official DALnet recommended channel — a recognition given only to a dozen or so channels on the network.

With WinBot's code badly aged and my scripting ability more experienced, I completely rewrote the bot in March of 2002. Within days, I wrote the first beta of the WinBot2 project, and cranked it up in the channel. With streamlined and organized code written for the new mIRC version six — opposed to the original WinBot's barely organized, stitched together code — the new bot was far superior. In enhancements over the original WinBot, it had a completely remade user list which communicated with DALnet services over operator rights, and acted as a replacement ChanServ in the event that services were lagged or split from the network. A new command system enabled all of WinBot's functions to be accessed from a variety of methods, in a more modular fashion. A helper bot, named LunchBot, used a skimmed version of WinBot2 to catch spammers in the channel by remaining non-opped and automatically reporting the spammers to WinBot for removal. The bot's beta testing phased was marked complete in Semtember 2002 after lots of constructive criticism from the channel ops that led to the final product of WinBot2.

After DALnet's 'peak' as the Internet's largest IRC network reaching over 130,000 consecutive users during the spring of 2002, mass denial of service attacks began to interrupt the network. By wintertime, the network was all but destroyed by continuous attacks by botnets of unsuspected computers infected with a trojan virus. Although the attacks had subsided by spring, the effects on the network population have been felt until this day, with the network averaging 35,000 users ever since.

In the beginning of 2004, DALnet's latest slate of rules imposed on the channel due to our 'official DALnet channel' status were considered overwhelming and unnecessary. Thus, the channel held a week-long vote among its operators deciding to revoke the channel's official ties to the network. On February 22, 2004, during the weekly Sunday op meeting, the vote was tallied in agreement to resign our own official channel status from DALnet.

It has been almost a decade, and the original foundation and spirit of DALnet #Windows95 still remains. While approximately 75% of past DALnet users have departed to other networks after the botnet DDoS attacks, DALnet #Windows95 has been resilient, averaging 40-50 concurrent users. Where our community stems from this point on is in our hands.