How to help TripSit

Depending on your skills and desire to be involved, there are a few ways you can help out, either as non-staff through donation or purchase of merchandise, or through two paths we have for people wishing to become more involved in the organization directly. This post will detail a few ways you can help us out.

Join the IRC

At some point, IRC access will be necessary, so you will need a way to access IRC. As you may have noticed, we try as hard as we can to get people who need assistance into the chat room. Real-time communication is the best medium for assisting people and for collaborating on projects. The easiest way to do this is through our webchat. This will get you the quickest access to our assistance chat room, #tripsit, as well as our general and drug chat rooms: #home and #drugs.

While using a webchat client is good for getting started, the features of a desktop client are useful for regular use. The TripSit Team have packaged our own client, which is a version of KVIRC configured with our server information. People who download this client will only have to set up SASL and register their nickname.

If you can't use KVIRC or prefer to use a different client, you can download a client on your own and use our guide to setting up the client to help figure out how to connect. If you hit any roadblocks you can join the #help room by saying "/join #help" without the quotes.

If you're already an IRC pro, our server information is:

• Server: irc.tripsit.me

• SSL Port: 6697

• We also have a guide to connecting through TOR.

• More IRC connection information

Become a TripSitter

The wonderful world of TripSitting is easy to enter, but difficult to master. People new to IRC do not realize that chat rooms can be stagnant for periods of time before picking up an intense amount of traffic. A lot of people who want to help out will join the channel and ask "Who needs help?". When no-one answers immediately, they leave and only seconds later someone will join and ask for help. They don't know they should really stick around, since it may be only a few minutes before someone will join and ask for assistance. This guide is here to help inform you of these mistakes and teach you how to be an awesome TripSitter!

Join the #tripsit and #tripsitters rooms

Our flagship resource for helping people is the #tripsit room on our chat service. Activity in this channel is kept quiet until someone needs help, which allows us to focus the full attention on the person needing assistance, rather than having more than one conversation going.

Next to #tripsit is our communication room, #tripsitters. Non-staff are welcome to join this room to communicate about #tripsit sessions. Most of the time, people just need someone to reassure them that they're going to be okay. However, in the event that a session is too much for you, you can use #tripsitters to get in contact with experienced TripSitters or other community members who are standing by at all times in the event that the session needs some specialized attention.

If nothing is currently happening in #tripsit, then both of these channels may be idle. You should take this time to join the other channels on the network, like #drugs and #home, until there's activity in the room. While waiting, you should also check out our guide on how to tripsit online and our chat overview. Be sure to read topics for important information!

If you consistently help out people you can submit an application and we'll offer you a position as an official TripSitter. After this, you can continue to be more involved in various ways and make it up to a Moderator position to help out the rest of our channels on the network. There are more positions than Moderator for people who want to help out more and can show dependability and trustworthiness.

Assist with substance research

As you may know, we have a large repository of substance information including our Wiki and factsheets. We are constantly adding, reviewing and expanding these. Working on drug information or potential changes is a great way to help directly, and can be conducted with the content team in the #content channel of our IRC network.

People who contribute extensively to wiki articles can apply to become an official staff member under the Contributor role and have more control over aspects of the wiki and additional projects. Eventually Contributors can become Editors with a more direct say in how we manage our information.

Other ways to help

One of the most beneficial ways to the network in general is to simply join the community, get to know the people and be an awesome person. By making friends and setting a good example, you can influence a lot of people in a positive way just through your day-to-day interactions. You might also find some good friends yourself, as many of us have. You can find some quick information in our chat overview page, and the easiest way to join the community is to use our webchat

Donations

We survive purely on donations. We don't charge for any of our services or information, nor do we have any advertisements on the site. Our operational costs of running servers is funded through donations and out of pocket. Any amount of donation is appreciated, and if you give us your address we can send you a few stickers as a way of saying thanks.

• Bitcoin donations: 1EDqf32gw73tc1WtgdT2FymfmDN4RyC9RN

• PayPal Donations

• Buy a TripSit Merch