How to behave on IRC

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 to somebody you know, do it with a private message. The same applies to goodbyes.

Also note that using your client facilities, (ircII "ON" command for instance), to automatically say hello or goodbye to people is extremely poor etiquette. Nobody wants to receive autogreets. They are not only obviously automatic, but even if you think you are polite you are actually sounding insincere and also interfering with the personal environment of the recipient when using autogreets. If somebody wants to be autogreeted on joining a channel, he will autogreet himself.

Remember, people on IRC form their opinions about you only by your actions, writings and comments, so think before you type. If you use offensive words, you'll be frowned upon. 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 "burps", connections going down because servers cannot handle the large amount of traffic anymore. Other prohibited actions include:

• Harassing another user. Harassment is defined as behavior towards another user with the purpose of annoying them.

• Annoying a channel with constant beeping.

• Any behavior reducing the functionality of IRC.

Training report sheet