History

Here is where we catalog the history of the TripSit network. Mostly a work of Teknos as he's the only one who's been here for it all. Please add your memories and edit mine as im sure im not 100% correct.

In the beginning

TripSit was created on reddit by Teknos in September 2011 with the goal of providing a sub for psychonauts and chemical researchers to post questions without fear of being criticized in any way. The format of reddit didn't allow for as quick of a response time as he wanted, so he created #tripsit on the Snoonet IRC network and tried to popularize it as much as possible.

For a while it was a very small room with less than 10 users at a time, making small talk and forming the environment for the future: a place where anyone can go to talk with people who are willing to lend an ear. User ProButcher made a post on /r/Drugs about TripSit which received massive upvotes. This spiked our user count to up to 40 (!!!) and was very chaotic for the weekend. It was decided at that point we needed another room to help control the chaos that was going on in #tripsit. #drugs was created and users were pushed over there to start general discussion: #tripsit would remain mostly clear with occasional conversation to keep it welcoming to those with a lot on their mind.

Later On

Since our humble beginnings - reality set in, and the TripSit community has grown to include an IRC network, a social media network, and a Wiki. We are, at our core, a network of caring people who for various reasons enjoy spending our free time assisting others - we strive to educate users, in order to reduce the amount of individual and societal harm caused by drug misinformation and misuse.

2013

In July, reality gave tripbot the ability to record statistics of notifies (basically a quick, short record of when someone was helped). For the first time, it became possible to get a general grasp of the number of people we were helping. Between when stats were implemented and the end of the year, TripSit helped a little over 2,300 people.

In September 2013 TripSit moved on to our own IRC network and currently has 150-180 connected users at any given time.