went with the simpler - ie. setting metadata to "suppressed" - first, and it all seems to be working perfectly now. thank you
installed IDJC from package manager, seems to run fine. output from terminal when running from command line [user@machine ~]$ pw-jack idjc jack client ID: idjc_default idjc 0.9.5 cpython 3.7.16 (default, Apr 11 2023, 13:17:45) [GCC 12.2.0] Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib64/idjc/site-packages/idjc/irc.py", line 39, in <module> from irc import client ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'irc' No IRC support launching backend backend launch attempt 1 libshout-idjc version 2.4.5 started...