Forums General Discussion Getting started, what is out there?

Hi
I am brand new to IRC . I see there are Servers and Channels.which at this stage are just words on the page.

How do I find what subjects each Server covers?

Also there does not seem to be an index for the channels. How do I find out what Channels there are and what field of interest they cover?

Sorry if it has been covered before.

Large servers don't usually have a general topic..
to list channels and topics use /list after connecting.
You might want to restrict the query to channels of at least 10 people /list -min 10

Thanks. I'll try that.

Well, I have tried to get a list but one was too busy and anothe saiid 'list too large, truncated.'
Difficult to understand the jargon and they didn't seem to have any clear subject. Are they just chat rooms or do any have a theme or interest ?
Is there some sort of 'insider' knowledge required to suss out appropriate groups?

OK. I have printed off all the Help pages I can find.
It looks a lot of stuff to learn. I hope it is not all teenage drivel on the sites when I eventually get through to them. I am 70.
Will there be anything there for the mature person, anyone?

what would you even want to talk about?

Politics, engineering, whatever.
Why do you ask?
What is the IRC for?

IRC is for everyone...
Most servers have a lot of channels and most channels don't give an actual item there discussing at that moment...

Most of the times it's just a standard text like :
-Come in !!! It's fun...
-The best channel of blabla...

Just try out a view channels...
You'll find one with your interests..
That's the way i did it...


Good luck...

stimpy

Thanks for the encouragement. I will persevere.

YW

That's why we are here for...

normally, if u connect to one of the major irc networks (call 'em "servers" if u like... i know somebody will prove me wrong about that name... just wanna know how long it takes ), that is, undernet, efnet, dalnet, newnet, or any other server u want, u can find many channels that don't have fancy names...
so, if u just type /join #australia , there might be a channel where actual australians meet!, same thing with /join #mexico , /join #newbies (people that are gettin' started with mirc), /join #grafitti , and so on... so, just connect to one of these networks and start joining channels... some of them might have only one user (you!), but, who know, u can hit one with hundreds of users!
good luck, and have phun!

Probably be easier if you would of told him to type /list

joining random channels will not get you what you want

Try http://searchirc.com/

I must say it's really fun to see that not only the young ones using mirc I hope you find a channel that you can find intresting and that you will have many houers of fun chat online.. good luck to you

mdconker: have u tried to do a /list while in Undernet?

undernet /list results: 33979/34429 Channels

Thanks.
http://searchirc.com is the answer I guessed must be there somewhere.
One more question:- What does <img src="/images/graemlins/laugh or smile etc mean?

Is it a type of smiley or do I enter it somewhere?

Where did you see that? <img> is a HTML tag that is used to include images in the page, and "/images/graemlins/" is the folder on this server where the smiley icons are stored.

When you write your post, you can left-click on one of the listed smilies to automatically add it to the text.

I see. I normally tick the box for an email to be sent to me when a reply comes in. The strings are in there.in the Outlook Express message

You prompted me to look here and I see they are the smileys.in the thread above..I suppose the email cannot handle smileys.
I did say i am new.

Thnx CtrlAltDel ... that proves my point that it's easier joining channels at random than reading a 30000-line list to find what u want...