Talk:IRC

Demographics would be nice

Which countries use which networks the most?

Perhaps also user demographics? Mention how many open source hackers use IRC as a central point for instant chat — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.223.20.123 (talk) 21:45, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

XMPP

I consider it to be the next generation IRC. What's the general consensus? Also, the article doesn't comment on what IRC is being replaced with (facebook, msn, et al) or its social impact (away from many-to-many chatrooms and into one-to-one chats), which fosters individuality as opposed to sociability - if that makes any sense. Nor does it mention who is still using IRC (techies and weirdos - in a good way). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.60.3.245 (talk) 15:09, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

I absolutely don't consider XMPP to be the "next generation IRC", since, first, it's generally construed as an IM protocol, not a group chat protocol (yes, I realize it can theoretically do both), and, second, it is not widely used in a direct way (as opposed to being the underlying protocol of proprietary services) and there's little indication that it is gaining ground and may reach IRC's level of recognition. At any rate, both your opinion and mine are our own, and any comparison must be done with reliable sources to back it. The same goes for comparisons with other, unrelated protocols, which also runs the risk of WP:COATRACK. LjL (talk) 15:43, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

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Unclear how it all works

I know virtually nothing about IRC, and after reading the article, I'm still a bit confused by a lot of the big picture questions.

I infer/assume that a network is composed of servers, and that channels are either local to a server (&) or span across the entire network (#). Channels can not span networks, though (I'm unsure of this). Clients themselves connect to a server, but the choice of server is mostly down to latency and server-only channels, as any server can access any network-wide channel in that network.

Is that right?

205.166.76.15 (talk) 22:45, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Channels are network-wide, but do not carry over into other networks. So, there is a #help on EFNet and another #help on Dalnet. I'm presuming a bit much, but local channels are rare. The vast majority will be network-wide (#), so I wouldn't get bogged down on the local channels (&) which may only be in place for local IRCops. Clients have a choice over what server they want to connect to. There are some round-robin domains that can connect to you a random EFNet server, for instance, but a client can pick from dozens of servers that are connect to the same network. If the server is too slow (latency), the client can stick it out or choose to switch to another server that may be faster. Rurik (talk) 23:55, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Some channels may be linked to several networks through the use of janus. For example, the same #net is available on irc.hackthissite.org and 2 other networks. But for the vast majority (~99.99%) of channels, they only exist on the network and are not inter network. Netalarm 10:24, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

This has nothing to do with the actual IRC protocol, however. That is a client-side relay and not notable. TrbleClef ♮ (talk) 20:08, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

A network is a cluster of individual servers. When you want to connect to a network, you choose a server thats best for you based on latency. There are many different networks out there all run by different people. Much like there are different websites. What theyre trying to say I think is that # is a network wide channel, meaning it doesnt matter what server you connect to within the network, all the channels text will be displayed the same on every server. Whereas if it was just local (&), youd only see it if you are connected to the same server, and there could be many of the same channel, with different users on one network. Just on different servers. Its kind of moot to say that it doesnt broadcast to other peoples networks. You can pretty much assume that. It would be like saying that me posting here isnt going to show up on someone elses wikipedia. I guess its just there to confuse people.

Also another thing that I thought was kind of moot is this line

with hundreds of thousands of channels (the vast majority of which stand mostly vacant)

The second part kind of cancels out the importantce of the first statement. Why even include the statement. Might as well just worry about the number of networks and users. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.83.71.178 (talk) 16:14, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

RE: Modern IRC unsourced material box: As far as I know, much of this information is common knowledge. Depending on your definition of "modern" (2k+ vs -2k?), sources for the services data can be found on this page. --68.183.131.94 (talk) 19:52, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Direct Client to Client

"as well as chat and data transfers via Direct Client-to-Client." I don't really think thats a feature of IRC. The on DCC info sent through the IRC server is that someone wants to DCC you (which is done through a NOTICE) JV Smithy (talk) 00:47, 22 December 2009 (UTC).

Well, it's true that a "DCC CHAT" connection or a data connection for a file transfer is not itself using the IRC protocol, but then as I understand it the data connections in FTP don't use the FTP protocol either, so is it really that big of a deal? —SamB (talk) 20:30, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

History

The article seems pretty light on the history of IRC, conspicuously lacking information about the original IRC network (EFnet), the significance of ircII (especially the 2.8.1 release). I understand that finding reliable sources will be a challenge, though.  :( //Blaxthos ( t / c ) 22:16, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

I think that, short of reliable sources, we could use what we have. A canonical source would be this list of links, including a history of first days of IRC from the creator. A more complete history is provided by Daniel Stenberg, which could be a good basis for a summary here, and the license is liberal "Feel free to link to this page or host it elsewhere. Please keep me credited as author." Parts of the history can be corroborated with this snippet which also brings an interesting perspective in the history of the IRC protocol by putting in context with other programs. Then there's the great split of 1996, where the EFNet/IRCNet split happened. Then there's more recent history, where we see a distinct decline of IRC users, except for a growth in Freenode. Some mentions of Jabber and Slack would also probably be in order. this article was an interesting read for me. --TheAnarcat (talk) 14:57, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

I decided to be just bold and import Stenberg's article as a basis for a new history section, keeping existing references and trying to remove less historically relevant bits and pieces. I skipped over the livinginternet snippets for now and have mentionned Jabber but not slack, for lack of external references...--TheAnarcat (talk) 15:58, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

The Standard (RFC1459) modes Section

Can this section be tidied or clarified a little? In the 'User Modes' section, there are four modes which are 'Channel User Modes' (+q,+o,+h,+v), however +o and +v are also listed in the 'Channel Modes' section.

Something else to note there, is that RFC 1459 does not contain the concept of a 'Channel Owner' (+q) or a 'Half-Op' (+h), so for factual accuracy these should be removed, or added to another small section of common non-rfc modes. FrostyCoolSlug (talk) 13:38, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

In addition, the RFC does not state that IRC Operators should have an & prefix. FrostyCoolSlug (talk) 13:46, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

 Done SpigotMap 14:00, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Images

Does IRC support images? Can images be transferred over IRC? Is support for display of images dependent on the client? -- Azemocram (talk) 23:52, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Transferring could be every file. if you can display inline images? Don't think that this is in the specs. Some clients create smilies out of the text-smilies. mabdul 13:57, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

IRC doesn't support images, some irc clients may turn image url's or send image files into images in chat, but irc itself doesn't support images. (for the record i'm refering to mIRC here, that client doesn't support any images in chat (aside from links)) 194.151.100.206 (talk) 09:40, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

the big four

since you gave a "reference" for the biggest IRC networks shouldn't we change the big four to the actual big four as you partially did? I mean the (our) list is incorrect... (I don't have access to any computer at the moment, will come back constantly in a week or so)mabdul 13:51, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

I assume this was a question for me? It isn't quite that simple. netsplit.de's top 100 is also only ranking by number of users, however if you look at the stats, the number of channels and servers is disproportionately smaller than the other networks. A quick solution would be to multiply the number of users by the number of channels by the number of servers. Taking the results of these numbers, the top 10 works out like this:

Network	Users	Channels	Servers	Average
QuakeNet	79142	59641	42	198244536924
IRCnet	64540	37562	34	82424550320
Undernet	51419	16478	22	18640210204
Ustream	46358	5803	12	5649324954
EFnet	40991	20039	50	41070932450
Rizon	18172	19921	17	6154075004
DALnet	17883	8553	42	6424038558
WebChat	15566	2001	6	186885396
IRC-Hispano	15332	6360	32	3120368640
FCirc	12603	15430	8	1555714320

So you can see how much smaller Ustream.tv's "network" really is in proportion to both EFnet and Undernet. Ustream.tv's proprietary software is also what is being measured, so that alone would allow us to discount that "network". We also have published sources for the "big four", which are backed up with the stats from netsplit.de once the numbers are averaged. --Tothwolf (talk) 15:19, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes keeping the big four as they are makes the most sense, Ustream.tv doesn't seem to be a traditional network and there's no reference to say it has ever been named as one of the big four even if it was larger. IRWolfie- (talk) 21:08, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

I did a little more research on Ustream.tv's IRC support and it's a little interesting. Apparently they run customized servers and have an embedded client called "UStream chat" on their website. A normal client can be used, but it still requires an account on their site and the use of the /PASS command with the account password. --Tothwolf (talk) 21:50, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Comparism

In recent times of icq, facebook, and msn, I wonder if IRC is still the biggest chat system world wide (in terms of user coverage)? Any figures? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.176.228.194 (talk) 17:21, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Freenode?

The Freenode page lists it as having 70,000 users and 40,000 channel which should clearly put it in the big four, correct?

comment added by mindstab, 2012 April 5

Force join

Recently I had an incident of which I randomly joined the #freenode server. I was in chat when the #freenode server just came up. It happened about 6 times before I just left the server open. Can I get an elaboration? Tez011 (talk) 14:31, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Unclear jargon

The word "opered" is jargon that is not explained, and its meaning is not entirely clear from context. In its first usage, it appears to be a typo for "opened." IAbookman (talk) 14:09, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

No consensus to move. Vegaswikian (talk) 02:15, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Internet Relay Chat → Internet relay chat –

Per WP:CAPS and WP:TITLE: this is a generic, common term, not a propriety or commercial term, so the article title should be downcased. In addition, WP:MOS says that a compound item should not be upper-cased just because it is abbreviated with caps. Matches the formatting of related article titles. Tony (talk) 04:12, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose (added post-discussion --Lexein (talk) 15:55, 20 September 2011 (UTC)): No, this is the proper name of a creation, an invention and protocol. The word "Relay" is not generic, it is technically specific to the protocol and implementation, and "Chat" is the specific product of the protocol and implementation. Compare Hypertext Markup Language, which was attacked for similar nonsensical decapitalization, resolved only by renaming to HTML, all caps. There has been ongoing panicky insistence on applying decapitalizarion suggestions (used occasionally elsewhere) as ironclad rules at WP - we should avoid this. --Lexein (talk) 04:51, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

The name of a creation, an invention ... like "telephone"? Just because a thing is an invention doesn't mean it's a proper noun. Is IRC (abbreviated with caps, of course) a proprietary, licenced technology? The lead talks in terms such as "Client softare is now available for every major operating system that supports Internet access". It uses lowercase "n" for "IRC networks", and "s" for "IRC servers". More tellingly, it says, "All client-to-server IRC protocols in use today are descended from the protocol implemented in the irc2.4.0 version of the IRC2 server, and documented in RFC 1459." Aha, so there are many Internet relay chat protocols, not just one. It's a set of technologies. Sounds like your caps are needed for the original one documented in RFC 1459, and that since then the cat's out of the bag and it's like "computer" or "network" ... just a common noun. Tony (talk) 06:37, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Inappropriate comparison with single-word inventions which have entered the common lexicon. Internet Relay Chat is an atomic thing. There is no Internet Relay Chat Network, though Dave's Internet Relay Chat Network might be a name for a particular network; point is, IRC modifies "network", and modifies "servers" - it is still atomic as a protocol and separate thing. Internet Relay Chat refers primarily to the protocol, and secondarily to the chat, so it is primarily a proper name. We don't say, "I was on the Internet last night, using relay chat", or I was connected to an Internet relay last night, chatting." All three words together form an atomic, unique thing. I would agree with the separate use of lowercase "relay" or "chat" when used as a thing: an IRC server, or a conversation, following the introduction of the full term, w/caps. This follows the example of works discussing Hypertext Markup Language later using lowercase "markup" and "language" as referring to parts of the total concept, but only after introducing it first fully capitalized. --Lexein (talk) 07:43, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

I've never heard about treating single- and multiple-word items differently: this seems to be an ad-hoc, localised innovation to try to sneak this through as capitalised when it shouldn't be.

No one would say, "I was on the Internet last night, using relay chat", because it's unidiomatic. You'd say, "I was using Internet relay chat last night"; even then, we usually abbreviate it, orally, so the examples are slightly awkward. Similarly, an ISP (that's "Internet service provider", not "Internet Service Provider", even though someone originally coined the term) probably wouldn't say to a potential customer that they need an asymmetric digital subscriber line connection; they'd refer to "an ADSL connection". We upcase acronyms and initialisms, but many style guides, including our own, say not to reverse-engineer the upcased abbreviation when expanding the item, unless of course it really is a proper noun. IRC is just a technical term now, given that it's a whole class of technologies, not the original one. Tony (talk) 08:16, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Calling anything "sneaky" assumes bad faith. Also, you haven't answered my use case, HTML. The problem is not with me, it is with the enforcement of arbitrary capitalization standards which capitalize article names against the wishes of artists and authors of works, and against the proper names of historical items. It is enforcement for the sake of enforcement for no other reason than personal certitude, not in accordance with any external widely applied standards. It goes far too far beyond the lowercasing of "the" and "and." It pains me to see editors, one by one, falling victim to the weird, twisted logic employed to rob all creators of the proper representation of the names of things. It is a laughable situation, and one which damages Wikipedia's reputation, as not even being able to get the names of things right.

To your response: I do not agree that "just a technical term now" applies, given that the name of the protocol and its implementation have not changed, and will not be changed. The fact that colloquially people don't write out "Internet Relay Chat" is not a justification for stripping the proper capitalization from this historical innovation. Before I would rename this article, I would split it - one for the protocol, its history and implementation details, and another for colloquial use.

There has been no "reverse engineering" abbreviation to full name. The name has never changed. Furthermore, that "no reverse engineering abbreviations" is made up and is not supported anywhere outside Wikipedia, it is fabricated for the purpose of pushing an unsupported, and unsupportable agenda. It's ridiculous, and stands in the way of Wikipedia doing its job, starting with getting the names of things right. It should be rewritten from scratch. In the meantime, it should properly be ignored as silly. --Lexein (talk) 09:28, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

As far as I'm concerned, citing "Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line" -> Asymmetric digital subscriber line above and not mentioning you had just pushed through this requested move is inappropriate. As someone who sees that term on standards documents just about daily, had I seen that requested move, I would have opposed it as well. The WP:TITLEFORMAT section of WP:TITLE explicitly states: "Use lower case, except for proper names" yet this is being ignored in the case of proper names of protocols and standards. It would seem to me we need an explicit exception to this silly MOS rule for protocols and standards because clearly common sense isn't in use. --Tothwolf (talk) 12:32, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose. Sources overwhelmingly use uppercase; if MOS rules demand a different capitalization, then MOS rules are wrong. Internet Relay Chat is a proper noun used for a protocol, just like Hypertext Transfer Protocol, Transmission Control Protocol, etcetera. Ucucha (talk) 12:12, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

You know very well that's not the way it works, and that you're sitting there passing or failing FACs is appalling, in that case. Now, is it a single, unique protocol? Tony (talk) 12:24, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

It is a single unique protocol, with subprotocols and commands allowing expansion over time, per the various RFCs. Just like HTTP, TCP. --Lexein (talk) 15:55, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose. It is a proper noun. — Dgtsyb (talk) 12:26, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
• Comment. AFAIK IRC refers to an Internet group communications solution that is based on a specific protocol, the IRC protocol. I do not think it refers to Internet chatting in a more general way. I think the burden to prove that there is a general meaning for this term should rely on the person who wishes to lower-case it. My 2 cents, Nageh (talk) 20:55, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
• Support This is not a proper name, just a technical term that is commonly up-cased to match its acronym. The MoS does not support that style. Don't be fooled by acronyms/initialisms - use lower case. Jojalozzo 02:35, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Oh, please. It's not a "term", except colloquially. It's the title of the specification, protocol, and implementation and has never changed. I would say, don't be fooled by overzealous, nonsensical, over-reaching, local, made-up, (either fetishistic, or otherwise control freak) rules, which stand in the way of Wikipedia doing its job, part of which is getting the names of things right. Proper names exist outside of Wikipedia - the fact that they are not allowed to persist inside Wikipedia is an aberration, unsupported by widely practiced standards of other encyclopedias and scholarly works. --Lexein (talk) 04:35, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

OK, like "telephony" was originally the title of an implementation. Let's get over this obsessive upcasing of anything that is vaguely technical, and restrict upcasing, as required by our site policies and guidelines, to items that are unambiguously proper names. And no, what someone does "outside" doesn't dictate what we do, or WP would be an unholy mess. Every publication, including ours, has house rules. Tony (talk) 06:42, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

We are not talking about an implementation here, but about a single, specific solution. I'm not sure how you can compare this to telephony, which is the general concept of communicating in voice over distance. Anyway, as I said above it depends on whether there is a general meaning for "Internet relay chat" or whether the meaning applies only for the specific, standardized protocol. I am uncertain about the more general usage, which is why I just commented, but I do think that if the name is wished to be lower-cased this more general usage must be proven via references. Nageh (talk) 07:40, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Tony: "Vaguely technical" - that's blinkered: deliberately not seeing or understanding, sorry. Where is this bias against getting the names of things right coming from? House rules should have some grounding in reality, since the aim of Wikipedia is after all, to be an encyclopedia, comparable, presumably favorably, with other encyclopedias.

Nageh: There is no general usage with the capitalization "Internet relay chat", except by mistake, or ignorance. The "United states of America", or "North america" : both are just wrong, against the proper name and proper usage. --Lexein (talk) 07:49, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Geographical names are always upcased. Technical terms not so unless there's a particular reason. Perhaps we could more usefully negotiate what those reasons are, to guide future discussions; there's quite a big grey area in telecom and computing, it seems to me, and non- and semi-experts (as well as experts) need to be in greater agreement about up and down. Tony (talk) 08:38, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

As well as distinguish noun from verb. "Internet Relay Chat" is a noun, "to chat" is a verb. I'm fine with lowercaseing the verb, of course. But nouns always get the proper name form, if there is one, and here, there very specifically, historically, is one. "Bell Telephone Co.", noun, "to telephone", verb, "to use a telephone", lowercase noun. "Transmission Control Protocol", noun, upper. "Per section IIa of the protocol", lower, except in the case of matters of state or medicine. These are all fine rules which work everywhere, except, apparently, here. --Lexein (talk) 09:25, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

There's always a possibility that I could be convinced to change my position but I have better things to do than participate in disrespectful discussion. Jojalozzo 15:10, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, that's too bad. My position is that there is a fundamental disrespect for authors and creators of works, and the readers of Wikipedia, built into the current MOS, against calling things by their proper names; it is against this that I reason, argue, and rail. You should see that as a valid position, rather than sniffing and refusing to contribute to the discussion. --Lexein (talk) 01:42, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose This is a proper noun. - MrOllie (talk) 15:15, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose Internet Relay Chat as per rfc1459 and capitalisation example MAVEN. --Hm2k (talk) 16:04, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose "Internet Relay Chat" is this Internet protocol's proper name. This rename request would be like renaming World Wide Web to "World wide web", File Transfer Protocol to "File transfer protocol", Domain Name System to "Domain name system", Simple Mail Transfer Protocol to "Simple mail transfer protocol", etc. In short, it ain't gonna happen. --Tothwolf (talk) 02:17, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose This is the specific IRC protocol, as defined by a rfc. This not about the generic concept of "chat that happens to be relayed over internet". --Enric Naval (talk) 21:27, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

IRC-Galleria?

An editor has suggested a link to the IRC-Galleria article ("the largest social networking website in Finland") be included in the See Also section of this article. I do not believe the link belongs here, any more than does, say, a link to 4chan or Facebook. Perhaps it should be listed on the IRC dab page (and it may be; I've not looked), but I do not believe it belongs in this article.

I reverted the addition of the link for this reason. Does anyone have any thoughts on the matter? — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 03:20, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Over-detailed?

An editor (the same one who tried to add IRC-Galleria to the EL list) has added an "over detailed" and "condense" tag to the beginning of this article. I disagree, but am not uninvolved, so I would like other opinions.

This page attempts to cover a technical topic and has roughly the same number of sections and level of detail as do the HTTP and FTP pages. I don't see that as problematic.

Anyone have any thoughts? — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 14:28, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

I have removed the templates for the reasons stated above. — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 14:34, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

What to do with the "Big Four"?

The list of "Big Four" has changed. Now freenode has passed most networks from the old Big Four currently described. EFNet is way under freenode, Undernet, QuakeNet and IRCNet. So maybe we don't have a Big Five, but really a new Big Four with freenode instead of EFNet.

Then again, size measures are subjective and we would need references to support a current version. Is it worth it? I am on IRC 24/7 for years and I never heard of the "Big Four" except on Wikipedia. Is it a useful, known concept that is worth covering here? --Chealer (talk) 17:09, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Bots

Following code does not belong in the main article because it is presumptive in nature, includes "you" statements and violates MOS. Copied and pasted from unsourced text file or Web site

Best Practices for Combating Viruses, Worms, Trojans, and Bots
The first steps to protecting your computer are to ensure that your OS is up to
date. This means regularly applying the most recent patches and fixes
recommended by the OS vendor. Secondly, you should have antivirus software
installed on your system and download updates frequently to ensure that your
software has the latest fixes for new viruses, worms, Trojans, and bots.
Additionally, you want to make sure that your antivirus program can scan e-mail
and files as they are downloaded from the Internet. This will help prevent
malicious programs from reaching your computer. You may also want to consider
installing a firewall.
Additional Definitions and References

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.115.25.199 (talk) 03:19, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Really guys?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/timeline/26d0b8c3bfdb0d6e20934a9fea2e8eb3.png

It would be nice if who ever created this image would learn how to edit images. And then maybe create a new image where the key isn't included or at least isn't screwed up to where we can't use it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.254.154.93 (talk) 04:27, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

I decided to fix the issue. I also added the rizon network to the timeline. — comment added by Redomar (talk) 17:10, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Can some one replace of crop the last part out of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Screenshot-XChat-_Moniker42_@_FreeNode_-_-ubuntuforums_(%2Btn)-1.png??

can some one replace this image? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Screenshot-XChat-_Moniker42_@_FreeNode_-_-ubuntuforums_(%2Btn)-1.png, its kinda insulting 194.151.100.206 (talk) 09:54, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

User mode nick prefix symbols?

Why the article doesn't got all the user mode nick prefix symbols? --TiagoTiago (talk) 21:41, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

they vary by server/network — Preceding unsigned comment added by OMPIRE (talk • contribs) 28 January 2015 (UTC)

This seems to talk about them as if they were standard everywhere... --TiagoTiago (talk) 03:34, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

I have never seen the symbols any different, but the colors do change depending on what client you are using. Rider ranger47 ^Talk 20:29, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the colors are specific to that client. I'm just focusing on the symbols here.--TiagoTiago (talk) 02:35, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

A few more examples of pages that seem to agree on the symbols: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 --TiagoTiago (talk) 02:48, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

"Admin" can be either & or ! depending on the IRCd, though the former is more common. nyuszika7h (talk) 09:08, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

twitch.tv

IRC is seeing a resurgence thanks to twitch.tv. Thankfully I have been on IRC before twitch's time so I can see the evolution first-hand. If anybody thinks they need to add anything, type away. Thanks, ian. 137.124.161.17 (talk) 02:17, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Too many articles

Here are 3 articles that are very similar: - Internet Relay Chat script - IRC bot - Internet Relay Chat services

While I know there are technical differences between these 3 things, it seems like having this material spread out over 4 articles (if you also include Internet Relay Chat) is unhelpful.

Also, what's up with the arbitrary choice of "IRC" vs "Internet Relay Chat"? For pretty much all articles of the form "Internet Relay Chat ____", I believe "IRC _____" is probably more suitable. (See ex. TCP congestion control)

104.228.101.152 (talk) 21:06, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

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Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 03:49, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Internet Relay Chat. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

• Added http://irc.netsplit.de and https://irc-source.com, 2 of the only IRC search engines left in existence.

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

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— Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.172.70.34 (talk) 04:50, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Efnet Bot Nest

By my diligent count there are around 1500-1800 actual human users on Efnet, the remainder are various botnets, clones, and zombie BNC or screened irssi instances. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:63:C297:5000:9DA6:689E:5BB6:9FD5 (talk) 16:19, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

Drew Gooden (YouTuber)

I think it’s time this man got a wiki page. His twitter bio is a good source of information but but I also have other knowledge on him. For example he calls his fans little stinkers because when he was a young child he thought it would be funny to throw his dogs faeces into a fan. His mother proceeded to call him a little stinker until the age of 13. Lil Chips (talk) 20:31, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Family Members

Are family members allowed to edit? In my particular case, my brother is on Wikipedia but I'm his sister, and there are much information that is incorrect. I understand that I have to be neutral, and not bias. JaraLynn (talk) 21:27, 25 August 2018 (UTC)

"IRC clients are available for every major OS platform that supports internet access" is no longer true...

KaiOS, the feature phone Linux operating system, has no IRC clients available, so I was wondering if this statement is still true? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.174.218.135 (talk) 16:25, 10 October 2018 (UTC) Well, KaiOS is used by 135 Million people worldwide. That's a lot of people, but I think that it's not that big compared to the likes of Microsoft Windows and Apple macOS (1.5 billion and 100 million, respectively, not accounting for people with Boot Camp or owning both a Mac and PC). Also, there are IRC clients run over the web, like KiwiIRC, so a KaiOS user could use that. However, it'd be clunky even with T9 autotype and voice dictation. XxBradMacxX (talk) 23:58, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Help to submit my draft article

I found it difficult to submit my article which I contributed Abubakar Zaria (talk) 10:39, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

Immediate concern needs clarification

I am deeply troubled how I might be perceived in my good intentions to make facts on Wikipedia for the better and safety of other people. Due to my Autism and intellectual delay the way I understand things and how I communicate can be greatly misunderstood by others, I am now going to declose my concerns to you as I feel some users will misunderstand my concerns if there not aware of things. I recently edited O'Donovan page as I felt I contributed to the page in a positive manner, I felt when it was edited that someone may have had a grudge against the family because of the removal so in turn because of that I said O'Donovan family should only edit because I felt they was under attack this was my understanding. I then looked further in to Wikipedia policy and stopped editing after advice. Secondly I was shocked to find a user called orangemike beileved there might of by death threats in edits. Firstly, I am a victim of people who have targeted me in the past who have tried to exploit me and others like me, I am a religious person and I have an understanding in Safeguarding vulnerable adults which I am. When I was editing the page khawarij sect I felt I had to remove the connection between Salafism and the Khawarij as these are two different sects. Although some Khawaraji have used the guise of Salafism they also have used the guise in Deobandis. So when there is information connected to a sect that is religiously not connected and Muslims have called against them, it makes me and others feel fear that our friends could be targeted although law-abiding worshipers could be viewed like the khawaraji and someone bring harm to us. I have to put that out there because people who might not like muslims might see information with a connection to sects and target the mosques and that's my concern if you don't think that's a reality it had been such as someone who attacked a mosque in London because they felt it was an extremist mosque which it was not. These are my concerns and I feel they are been misunderstood. IrishDonovan (talk) 10:34, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

"IRC adapter" is not explained

irssi.org:

"Irssi Chat Client. Your text mode chatting application since 1999. IRC built-in. Multi-protocol friendly for module authors. Shipped-by-default Perl scripting with a wide range of available extensions. Integrates into the UNIX stack: Your window manager, your terminal emulator, your remote connection, your terminal multiplexer, your IRC bouncer, your IRC adapter."

• "IRC adapter" does not occur in any article.
• "remote connection" does not disambiguate

References

• https://github.com/nandub/hubot-irc This is the IRC adapter for hubot
• https://metacpan.org/pod/Hubot::Adapter::Irc
• https://www.npmjs.com/package/modum-irc-adapter
• https://github.com/akrennmair/joe-irc-adapter
• https://joe-bot.net/recipes/adapter/
• lita-irc an adapter for Lita that allows you to use the robot with IRC.
• Good uses for an IRC bot in an IT department reddit
• Curated list of awesome IRC resources

.... 0mtwb9gd5wx (talk) 21:57, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

Non-working external link

https://irc-source.com/ form the external links does not seem to work. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vaganyik (talk • contribs) 01:15, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

Image not a Sun server?

It seems the image of the first IRC server doesn't actually display what it says it does. Has the server been in a strange case or something? It seems to have an Apple logo on it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SimonTheSaint (talk • contribs) 05:52, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

This is a Sun server - the Sun logo is about halfway down on the righthand side. The other two logos (one of which is Apple) appear to be for attached components. Mindmatrix 12:35, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

"AccessIRC" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect AccessIRC and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 June 30#AccessIRC until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. 1234qwer1234qwer4 16:48, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

"IRC networj" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect IRC networj and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 July 1#IRC networj until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. 1234qwer1234qwer4 22:37, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

Requested move 29 January 2024

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Bensci54 (talk) 17:15, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

---

Internet Relay Chat → IRC – Per WP:COMMONNAME and MOS:ACROTITLE, this acronym is primarily used for this subject and the subject is primarily referred to by its acronym. PhotographyEdits (talk) 11:25, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Note: WikiProject Internet culture has been notified of this discussion. Vanderwaalforces (talk) 17:23, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Note: WikiProject Computing has been notified of this discussion. Vanderwaalforces (talk) 17:23, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Note: WikiProject Telecommunications has been notified of this discussion. Vanderwaalforces (talk) 17:24, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

• Support. Even when IRC was still popular, everyone called it IRC and not Internet Relay Chat. IRC already redirects to this article so the primary topic won't change. JIP | Talk 18:56, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
• Support per MOS:ACROTITLE, specifically "In general, if readers somewhat familiar with the subject are likely to only recognise the name by its acronym, then the acronym should be used as a title." -Ljleppan (talk) 12:51, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The importance of IRC in the development of the internet - the hardware and bandwidth overhead requirements

The importance of IRC is that it was one of the first examples of a tool/platform that enabled, relatively easily, "hosting side" or "Service side" capabilities to non-corporate nonprofessionals with home client hardware with a residential internet connection. The clients incorporated sufficient built in, usually GUI-based or GUI-facilitated, functionality to provide rudimentary channel hosting capabilities (Ableit lacking the ability to effectively host your own network). No need to know how to script HTML or any other coding. Additionally, it was the 1st example of a wide-spread avaible "realtime interactive" chat/communications environment.

in fact, the "Realtime chat" concept, is *still* a relatively minimally used and minimally developed field of technology to the point that this functionality CONTINUES TO BE a major reason why people still seek out IRC (that, and being old crusty neckbeards angrily dismissive of change; PROTIP: you have an exceptionally high likelihood of finding an operational CRT monitor in the home of a heavy user of IRC in '24)

the ability to use IRC for this tyhpe of relationship (in which the "user" is another residential internet connected user just like the "host" with a very "symmetrical" arrangement of resources) also allowed it to be used for some of its more notorious applications.

notably: IRC was used extensively by military in-theater users, for battlefield intelligence reporting and command and control, purportedly during the baltic wars and the 1st gulf war, in addition to other smaller conflicts that don't have "war" names attached to them. Even in the mid 1990s, laptops existed and since IRC could be used with the bandwidth provided by modem interfaced to an RJ-12 opper wire phone, nascent cellular phone, or satellite phone it meant it could be used almost anywhere in the world to send reports back to a base of operations.

in addition, it also enabled the early hackers to perform realtime command and control of infected computers. The old "botnets" were almost always controlled by headless IRC clients, leading to the policy of blocking various IRC ports in the earliest retail SOHO routers.67.165.122.133 (talk) 00:29, 6 March 2024 (UTC)