I'm making an IRC bot for a game to connect the in-game chat to an arbitrary IRC network/channel.
Some users complain that the bot takes too much time to load, and it's because of the bot having to get the MOTD.
Is there a way to ignore the MOTD?
The bot is using the LuaIRC library for IRC protocol handling.
The protocol described in RFC 1459 (section 8.5) defines that the MOTD will be sent to every client that is connecting to an IRC server.
This is part of the connection procedure and if you want to ignore it, you have to manage that on your client. I guess this is not about reading it or ignoring it, but rather not being annoyed by the time spent to make the bot ignore these messages.
If you happen to be the administrators of one of the network you are connecting to, you might want to connect your bot as an IRC operator. Some classes use to be defined for special users or servers in order to make them able to read data faster.
But for the other networks, you will have to find a way to manage this MOTD better, because you will receive it anyway.