IRC Chatting Howto

If you’re interested in chatting, but you don’t know what it is all about, you can start with indivia’s web interface. If you find IRC chat interesting, you can try some more sophisticated client such as Xchat or Pidgin.

The main information you need for chatting is the following:

• configuration parameters, see below;
• the channel where you wish to chat (channel names begin with the # symbol, e.g.: #indymedia or #etc). You can choose whatever channel you prefer. The most popular channel on irc.autistici.org is #hackit99, but the network hosts italy indymedia’s channel as well, #indymedia; You can find A/I collective members on our channel to pester us with questions we will not answer, #ai
• your nick, that is the name you want to use while chatting (you can use your real name or a nickname you like). If you want to be sure that your nick isn’t used by someone else, register it (if you want to know more about this and other services, read this manual).

The main commands you’ll need in IRC – contained in specific menus in graphic clients such as Xchat – are the following:

• /nick followed by the nick you want to use for changing your nick
• /join followed by the name of the channel you wish to access (e.g. /join #hackit99);
• /part followed by the name of the channel you wish to log out from;
• /quit to quit IRC;
• /msg followed by someone else’s nick in order to start a private conversation (a socalled ‘private message’ or ‘query’) with her.

There are of course many more commands: if you wish to learn more, you’ll find several howtos in the Web.

A/I’s IRC server offers some additional services called ‘IRC Services’. To learn more about them, read this manual.

Technical Info

• Server address: irc.autistici.org
• Port (with SSL): 6697 or 9999

For client configuration, read the howtos on X-Chat, Pidgin (for Linux, Mac and Windows), Irssi (Linux command line).

Since the mufhd0 network is managed together with ECN and Indivia, should the A/I servers have problems you can connect to these other servers.

Contacts

If you have any problems or questions about our IRC service and/or about the possibility of linking other servers, write to: irc@autistici.org.