This plugin provides a variety of services related to the /whois command.
It can automatically do a /whois on everyone who joins any channel you're in, and display the results as a one-line summary. In addition, if their IP address is unresolved, it can attempt to do a /dns on the address and report those results.
It provides a summary whois; the useful bits of whois info displayed as a one-line summary.
It extends the action of Ircle's /dns command so that you can supply a nickname rather than hostname and get the results.
It also provides a way to ping users who have CTCP disabled, by using an extended whois on them.
As a personal note, I would like to make an empassioned plea that you don't abuse the information the auto-whois feature provides. Sure, you can /whois anyone, anytime you like. But, auto-whois puts that information in front of your eyes for everyone you meet. The temptation may be great to comment publicly on what channels a person is in. I am hard pressed to think of anything ruder or less ethical than doing so.
For channel ops, this plugin can be valuable tool -- if someone joins #macintosh and you see that they're also on @#macsucks and @#pcrulez, reasonable inferences can be drawn about how they might behave; you can have them all selected and ready to kickban before they can get out more than one line of "macs suck".
For voyeurs, this plugin can be fun. Just be nice; don't ridicule your fellow netizens in public. (If you do it in a channel I'm an op in, you'll get kickbanned.)
/autodns [ Off | On | All | Silent]
This command turns on or off the auto-DNS feature, which will try to do a /dns lookup on anyone who joins a channel you're in if their host address was not resolved into a domain name when they logged onto the server.
The All setting will auto-DNS everyone who joins, translating names to IP numbers and numbers to names. Using this setting will help /iphostban on work faster, because there'll be a high likelyhood that the alternate form of the address will be in your machine's local DNS cache.
The Silent setting with auto-DNS everyone, but not report the results. This is handy primarily if you use the /iphostban option; if you ban someone, the lookup will already be done and cached on your machine, and the ban is faster, and your windows don't get cluttered up with auto-DNS displays.
/autowhois [ Off | On | All | Silent]
This command turns on or off the auto-whois feature, which will automatically do a /whois on anyone who joins a channel you're in, and display the results as a one-line summary. The On setting displays the "real" name and server the user is on. The All setting displays that plus the list of channels the user is in. The Silent setting performs the auto-whois (allowing /rnakick realname-autokicks to happen) but doesn't display the results.
Note that in channels with a high rate of joins the server may not be able to keep up with the volume of whois requests. Once 10 auto-whois requests are pending replies from the server, the plugin stops doing auto-whois until the server catches up, to prevent you from getting so hopelessly lagged that you can't even leave the channel. Even with 10 auto-whois outstanding, it can take a minute from the time you hit the window close button to the time the window actually closes.
If no parameter is given, the current setting is displayed.
/rnakick [realname+nick!user@host kickmsg]
This command allows you to auto-kick users based on information in their IRC realname field as well as their nick!user@host. Used without any parms, it lists the current realname autokick list.
Used with a realname+nick!user@host mask and a kickmsg, it creates a new autokick entry. The realname and nick!user@host info can contain wildcards. If the realname mask you're entering contains spaces, enclose the entire realname+nick!user@host part in quotes. Here are a couple examples:
/rnakick *LamerScript*+*!*@* Take your lame script elsewhere
/rnakick "*Joe Smith*+*!*@*.mindspring.com" Ban Evader
This command is implemented in the hipWhois plugin, even though it is more related to channel ops stuff, because it uses the results of the auto-whois to find the realname. This implies that this command will only work when auto-whois is turned on.
By default the ban is placed as *!*@current.host.info so that the user can't just switch nicks and reenter. If the first 3 characters of the kickmsg string are an NUH ban mode as described for the /bannick command, the ban is placed using that type of wildcard, and the rest of the words are used as the kickmsg.
/sping server.full.address
This command sends a TIME request to the named server and reports how long it took for the response to come back. Effectively, it pings a server. Usually, you need the full formal name of the server. For example, the server you know as twisted.dal.net has a formal name of twisted.ma.us.dal.net. The formal name of a server is shown when you connect, or can usually be obtained with the /links command.
/swhois nickname
This command does a /whois on someone and displays the results as a one-line summary the same as the auto-whois display.
/xwhois nickname
This command does an extended /whois on someone even if your Ircle preferences are set for non-extended whois. The difference between extended and non-extended is that extended shows you the user's idle time. It can take much longer to do an extended whois, because the results have to come from the server the other user is on, and lag applies.
One useful application for this command is to set your Ircle prefs for non-extended whois, have a Whois button on your palette in the User window, then enter this command:
/button #32+o /xwhois $selecteduser
Then you'll get a fast /whois when you hit the button normally, and an extended whois if you option-click the button.
/whereis [public] [summary]
This command provides a report of which servers a channel's users are on. It will not work in a channel which has more than 50 users in it.
By default, it reports full details in a local display. If you add the summary option, it will report the results as a 1-line summary. If you add the public option it will display the report in the channel instead of locally.
The public option can be abbreviated as pub, the summary option as sum.
/wping nickname
This command "psuedo-pings" a user who has CTCP disabled, by doing an "extended whois" on the user and measuring the response time.
The extended whois requires information from the user's server (rather than just your server), so this command can give a fairly accurate measurement of the lag between you and a user who isn't responding to CTCP PINGs. In the strictest sense, this command measures the part of the lag between you and the user which is caused by the IRC network. There could be additional lag between the user and the server s/he is on, and this is not included in the measurement. Still, the results from this command are usually within a couple seconds of the lag measured by a standard ping.
This command is also, for what it's worth, a sort-of "stealth ping"; the target user can't tell you're doing it.
You cannot ping an entire channel with /wping.
Note: This command uses a technique for doing an extended whois which is not explicitly sanctioned by RFC 1459 (the IRC standard). Instead of doing "/whois servername nickname" it does "/whois nickname nickame". This has worked on every server I've tried, but it might fail on some servers since it's not stricly according to the standards.