home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- Etiquette on irc
- - or -
- How to Avoid Getting Yourself Kicked out of Channels
-
- Original Authors: Lea Viljanen (LadyBug) <viljanen@kreeta.helsinki.fi>
- Ari Husa (luru) <so-luru@tolsun.oulu.fi>
- Modified By: Troy Rollo (Troy) <troy@plod.cbme.unsw.oz.au>
- Further Modified By: James Sneeringer (CrowMan) <jvs@ocslink.com>
-
-
- 1) Language
-
- The most widely spoken and understood language on irc is English. This
- does not mean it is the only language on irc! Far from it, in fact. In
- general, it is ok to speak any language. The usual protocol is to use a
- language that is understood by the majority of the channel you're in.
-
- Some channels prefer that only a single language, or select group of
- them, be used in their channel. This is particularly true of channels
- dedicated to particular countries. They may tolerate other languages,
- but their preference naturally lies with their native tongue. These
- channels may even have a topic set that says what the channel's
- preferred language is.
-
- 2) Hello and Goodbye
-
- It is not necessary to greet each and every person that joins a channel
- you're on. On a busy channel, this would quickly become annoying, as
- everyones' screens become filled up with "hello" messages, and nothing
- else. If you feel inclined to greet someone that you don't know, send
- a private message with the /msg command.
-
- Having established that a screenful of greetings is A Bad Thing, it
- follows that automated greetings are worse. A drawback of the client's
- ability to react to any arbitrary event with an arbitrary action is
- that it is often misused. While you may only be trying to be polite to
- everyone, you are in fact being just the opposite. Automated greetings
- are impersonal at best.
-
- 3) Channel Discussion
-
- As a general rule, there is no general rule about what sort of discussion
- may be taking place on a channel at any given time. Usually, the topic
- of discussion will be related in some way to the channel's name. People
- on #perl probably answer questions about the Perl programming language
- and discuss new features. However, this is not always the case!
-
- The best strategy is to watch the discussion for a bit to get an idea of
- what the channel is really all about. Unless you know otherwise (such
- as from the channel topic), you should always feel free to contribute to
- the conversation, though you should take care not to try to force the
- discussion in a direction that it isn't flowing toward.
-
- 4) } { | ` ~ ] [ \ @ ^
-
- No, it isn't line noise, and no, someone didn't make a typing error. On
- irc, there is a large population of users from Scandinavian countries,
- and the above characters represent letters in their alphabet. Since not
- everyone has access to a terminal that can use or display the real
- letters, these characters are instead substituted.
-
- { is an A with 2 dots over it (ä)
- } is an A with a small circle above it (å)
- | is either an O with 2 dots over it or an O with a dash (/)
- through it (either ö or ø)
- ` is an e with an accent over it (é)
- ~ is an u with 2 dots over it (ü)
-
- [, ], \, @ and ^ are the preceding five letters in upper case.
-
- Of course, the irony here is that the French and German mappings are not
- the same. Oh well...
-
- 5) ATTENTION!
-
- If you remember nothing else from this document, remember this. People
- on irc form their opinions about you based solely on your actions,
- writings, and comments on irc. Think before you type.
-
-