SILENCE Command

The silence command is basically another form of the popular ignore command find in many IRC clients; however, unlike client ignore lists, silence stops the messages from a given user at the server level, before they can reach the client. This only affects private messages, channel messages are still shown.

The command is as follows:

/silence [+]user@host   Add the user@host mask to the silence list (*!user@host) 
/silence -user@host     Remove the user@host mask from the silence list (*!user@host) 
/silence +nick          Add nickname based silence (nick!*@*) 
/silence -nick          Remove nickname based silence (nick!*@*) 
/silence                List the current silence list for you 
/silence nick           Show the silence list for the given nick (restricted to network staff)

It is possible to use wildcards (i.e., ? and *) as needed in the silence mask. You may need to use a quote or raw (e.g., /quote silence +user@host) command in front of the silence command if your client does not understand the silence command.

Reverse silence

Prepending '!' to the mask or nickname will cause the entry to act as a reverse silence, that is, always allow users matching the mask to send you messages. This allows you to silence *!*@* (block everyone) and then add reverse silences for those who you would like to be able to message you.

Example: /silence +!JoeUser

The maximum number of silence entries you may have at one time on DareNET is 50. Also, one drawback is that you cannot specify the types of messages which are filtered like you can with ignore on many clients, rather all private messages from the specified nick/mask get suppressed. The upside is that the messages are stopped at the server and never make it to the client, making it useful against private message floods.

Account silences

The silence command also supports matching users against their DareNET (NickServ) account name using the +x hostname format.

Example: /silence +*!*@joe.*.*

This will match any user that is logged into the specified NickServ account, which in the above example would be the account "joe", regardless of whether they have set umode +x or not. You can also have NickServ automatically add entries to your silence list when you authenticate! See /msg NickServ HELP IGNORE for more information.