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HOW TO BEHAVE ON IRC

Authors:      Lea Viljanen    (LadyBug)  viljanen@kreeta.helsinki.fi
              Ari Husa        (luru)     so-luru@tolsun.oulu.fi 
Revised:      David Rientjes  (David-R)  david-r@wildstar.net

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 then English
with your friends, go to a separate channel and set the topic (/topic
<channel> <topic>) to indicate that.  For example:
   /topic #finland Finnish Only!!
would mean that this channel would be reserved for Finnish discussion.
On the other hand, you should check the topic when joining a channel 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 and is used often.  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
rule applies to goodbyes.

3) Discussion

   When you come to a new channel it's advised you to listen for a while to
get an understanding of what is talked about.  Feel free to participate, 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, so the above
characters are letters in their alphabet.  This has been explained on IRC
about a million and one times, so read the following and 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 won'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
flood a channel or user (send large amounts of unsolicited information).
This is likely to get you /kicked off the channel or /killed off of the
IRC server.  Flooding causes network troubles and connections break because
servers cannot handle the large amount of traffic any more.

Bottomline, just try to have fun on IRC.  It was invented to be a source
of educational and entertaining discussion, so use it.  Make sure you take
IRC to it's fullest and participate and make new friends all around the
world!
