/************************************************************************ * IRC - Internet Relay Chat, doc/etiquette * Copyright (C) 1990, Lea Viljanen and Ari Husa * * This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify * it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by * the Free Software Foundation; either version 1, or (at your option) * any later version. * * This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the * GNU General Public License for more details. * * You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License * along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software * Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. */
HOW TO BEHAVE ON IRC
Authors: Lea Viljanen (LadyBug) viljanen@kreeta.helsinki.fi Ari Husa (luru) so-luru@tolsun.oulu.fi
1) Language
The most widely understood and spoken language on IRC is English. However! As IRC is used in many different countries, English is by no means the only language. If you want to speak some other language than English (for example with your friends), go to a separate channel and set the topic (with /topic) to indicate that. For example /topic Finnish only! would mean that this channel would be reserved for Finnish discussion. On the other hand, you should check the topic (with /list command) before you move to a channel to see if there are any restrictions about language. On a channel not restricted by /topic, please speak a language everybody can understand. If you want to do otherwise, change channels and set the topic accordingly.
2) Hello/Goodbye
It's not necessary to greet everybody on a channel personally. Usually one "Hello" or equivalent is enough. And don't expect everybody to greet you back. On a channel with 20 people that would mean one screenful of hellos. It's sensible not to greet, in order not to be rude to the rest of the channel. If you must say hello, do it with a private /msg. The same applies to goodbyes.
3) Discussion
When you come to a new channel it's advised you to listen for a while to get an impression of what's discussed. Please feel free to join in, but do not try to force your topic into the discussion if that doesn't come naturally.
4) {}|[]\
IRC has quite a lot of people from Scandinavian countries, the above characters are letters in their alphabet. This has been explained on IRC about a thousand and one times, so read the following, do not ask it on IRC:
{ is an A with 2 dots over it } is an A with a small circle above it | is either an O with 2 dots over it or an O with a dash (/) through it [, ], and \ are the preceding three letters in upper case.
There are a lot of people from Japan as well, who use Kanji characters which may look quite exotic as well. As I don't know Kanji I don't even try to explain any of the characters.
5) ATTENTION!
Remember, people on IRC form their opinions about you only by your actions, writings and comments on IRC. So think before you type. Do not "dump" to a channel or user (send large amounts of unwanted information). This is likely to get you /kicked off the channel or /killed off from irc. Dumping causes network 'burbs', connections going down because servers cannot handle the large amount of traffic any more.