Forums General Discussion Chat rooms other than IRC

What is the difference between the chat on IRC and chat rooms on the web in general, eg Yahoo Chat and others?
I thought that ,by definition, all would be on IRC.

I still haven't found anything of interest on any chat room. It seems to be just snippets of not very much.

Then you haven't looked. There's hundreds of IRC networks, carrying up to hundreds of thousands of channels per network. There's a channel where you can hang out and talk about whatever rocks your boat, you just gotta find it. As for yahoo chat, it's just a ripoff of the concept of IRC.

when you jump into an IRC channel (chatroom), you are entering a conversation mid-way. there are plenty of advantages and disadvantages to IRC chatrooms and also to AIM chatrooms. i personally, seem to get better support for what i need in the irc chatrooms than i do on any other medium... try it out.. if you like the AIM or other chatrooms better, then of course use them... but i think that after getting used to mIRC, you'll find a lot of advantages irc has...

Hello
I took your advice and looked harder. I did four searches on Dalnet which took about 20 minutes each to search 15500 channels.
The first search for '/list mechanical engineer' which produced one channel for Electrical Engineer which had nothing in it.
The other searches were for 'thermodynamics', 'v8 engines', 'cam design' and 'vee engine'. All took about 20 minutes each and produced nothing at all.

In all about one and a half hours with no result Is this how people spend their time?
Any constructive suggestions welcomed.

you mite try /list *engine* that would give you a bit wider range. I'd also try some other channels, like channels that may have ppl in a certain geographical area, or certain age group. And you would no doubt get more channels if you used *auto* or *car* than v8 engine. (altho you may get a lot of auto racing channels i suspect) ANd of course, try other networks

What you find may not be exactly what you want, but it could lead you to other channels that interest you more.

I think i mentioned to you earlier that it may take a while to find a channel and ppl that you enjoy chatting with. Everyone spends some time at first finding ppl they enjoy talking to (not unlike IRL). Thinking of all the friends i;ve made over the years, i have to say the time was well spent

OK. I will keep trying from time to time.
Thanks for the info.

You're welcome, and good luck!

I am suprised you don't use a search engine, such as google
using key words 'v8 irc chat' and find what you are interested in, alot of ppls host their own webpages w/ a java chat that can also be accessed from an iRC server using mIRC, w/ its' address is often given.
That's the wonder of iRC, you have an intrest, some ones' got a chan. You just have to find your own niche.

Since it hasn't been mentioned yet, pretty much the best IRC search out is http://searchirc.com - as you'll be able to find virtually any non-secret channel on any known IRC network...

I say this because:

1) SearchIRC does not have arbratary limits on networks, requiring them to have N number of users to get listed. All networks are included when possible.
2) SearchIRC lists ALL channels, netsplit.de and others only store channels with >N users, so they only have partial channel lists.

Check them out for yourself and compare.

good point Darkmind. i think the reason it wasnt brought up in this thread is due to squerrty being told about it in another thread as i recall. Never hurts to give a resource more than once tho