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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 


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.
