Quick Guide to...
IRC
IRC is a nice way of communicating with people you have lost contact with verbally, or will never actually get to meet in real life because they live on the other side of the world.
IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat. It's made up of a number of different IRC servers across the world which you can connect to. IRC is split up into different IRC networks, such as Dalnet, Undernet, Afternet and some other smaller ones.
Every network generally has servers all over the world. You can connect to any of these servers, and you can talk to anyone else connected to the same network, no matter which of the servers they are connected to.
You need an IRC client to be able to participate in chats, and generally, once people have found a chat room (Channel) they like, they stick with it, or keep visiting it regularly. All chat channels begin with a '#' character, and when you're connected to an IRC server, typing '/join #<channel>' will allow you to join a channel and start chatting to the people in it.
Here are a few of the things you might hear in IRC channels
Op - | this is a mode that important people in a channel get. It allows them to Kick people, Ban people and lots more. |
Kick - | This means to throw someone out of a channel. |
Ban - | obviously means to ban someone from entering a channel |
Voice - | This is a mode that means you can talk in a channel that is moderated. |
Moderated - | This simply means that the channel ops (operators) have decided to moderate who speaks in the channel. |
There are a number of good IRC clients around, possibly the best on the Amiga or any other computer being AmIRC [http://www.vapor.com/].
Have fun, and if you can, come on the server irc.afternet.org
and join the #trogsoft channel to chat to us Or the #woa channel on the same server.