#mIRC Rules_©
A Guide to IRC Netiquette

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e're like most other channels, especially most help channels, in what we allow and what we find annoying. At the end of this page are links to sites that discuss more general IRC 'Netiquette'. The points that follow focus on ways our channel may differ from other channels in our expectations.

Keep Channel Purpose in Mind
Predicting the Future
Asking For/About Pre-Fabs
The Teaching of Annoyances
Politics of Other Channels
Read the FAQ, Mang! [RTFM]
Telling Some Relevant Details
Careful Showing Your Code
When and Where to Ask
Attention Seeking Gimmicks
Designating Your Answerer
Messaging Others for Help
Fairly High Tolerance Level
Correct Behavior Privately

Consider the Lag Factor
Unauthorized Advertising
Speak English Even If Broken
Keep Noise Making Down
Hold the Useless Reports
Let Disturbing Posts Die
Automatically Kick-able Offenses
Inconsistency of Treatment
When You Yourself Trigger a Ban
If a Whole Site is "Shit-listed"
Occasional Social Banter
Frequently Unanswered Questions
We're All Volunteers, Here
You're More than Welcome

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Keep Channel Purpose in Mind

The #mIRC channel exists for the discussion of mIRC^®, the winsock IRC client [i.e. shareware for talking on the internet using a PC and a Windows^® operating environment]. It's a mutual self-help channel, for users who are not new to mIRC and who can find their own way around the documentation, at least to some extent. We do not discuss the merits or shortcomings of mIRC^® as compared to other IRC clients. Otherwise, our most fundamental goal is to keep the mIRC^® information content high. We're a public channel, welcoming people of all ages, cultures and walks of life. Please, try to not offend anyone and most especially to not be offended if someone doesn't conform to your own idea of proper.

Predicting the Future

We will (almost) always display the current version in our channel topic. Any "mIRC" you encounter with a higher number is bogus. To learn about new features, read versions.txt that comes in the install file. We don't care to enumerate current features, when this information is readily available. Future program features and release dates are never announced in advance on #mIRC. Programming is funny that way... one never knows when they are almost done, as much as they might like to fool themselves about that. We will not create vapor-ware.

Asking For/About Pre-Fabs

If you're having trouble finding, installing, controlling or cleaning up after a pre-made script (i.e. that you didn't write), look to the authors for documentation or repairs, or for help with any problems you may have in making mIRC work for you, and not to us at #mIRC.

There are far too many people on IRC running pre-fab script/inis that they have not learned to control. We are the 'Roll Your Own' channel. Please don't ask for pre-fabs or for evaluations of them. We do not, as a group, recommend any prefab...not even the ones we've written ourselves. We're here to learn from each other how to write our own (um, scripts that we've not learned to control).

The Teaching of Annoyances

#mIRC is dedicated to a kinder, gentler IRC. We're not in the business of teaching folks about ways to defeat programs or users, or to interrupt strangers.Most people find that stuff to be rude and annoying and so, we just don't teach it, allow it to be taught, or help with it at all, not even to help you find a channel that will teach it.

Compromising the .exe

We do not discuss on the channel whether or not it is legal to hack the .exe for personal use. Regardless of our views about whether it is legal under various hair-splitting circumstances, #mIRCops all basically respect the author's wishes to receive credit for his work and to keep the integrity of the .exe intact, and so we do not permit discussions on the channel of how to get around the hard-coded mIRC^®version reply. We also are often annoyed to discover, after working hard to uncover some apparent bug, that the 'victim' is using a hacked .exe, and so we've learned from experience to refuse to help such users with any problems that they may be having.

Politics of Other Channels

#mIRCops don't get involved in non #mIRC politics, including 'taken-over' situations, 'removing bots' or restoring ops to opless channels. We don't join to tell who is there, find out for you why you got banned, get you an invite or find splits. Don't recruit for help on #mIRC. We'll point out problem behaviors when we see them, in the interest of spreading good netizenship. We teach how to keep from getting banned and how to protect a channel from being lost in the first place.

Read the FAQ, Mang! [RTFM]

If your question or problem is clearly addressed in the mIRC documentation, don't be surprised to be pointed there (hopefully with some hint of where to look). Please, don't get testy about being asked to read some specific section of the documntation. Even if we were to retype it for you, you'd still be doing some reading, so get over it. If you have already studied the FAQ and explored mIRC^® /help, then tell specifically what it is about the documentation that has you confused. We understand that it takes most people many readings and lots of practice to grasp what others may seem to understand almost intuitively. Anyone who repeatedly displays trouble reading the documentation may be pointed to a channel which prefers to help on a more rudimentary level. Even if not in the FAQ or help file, one of the more annoying questions is: "Will this work?: whatever" Some questions are best answered with an experiment. Let us know how it turns out if you discover anything interesting.

Telling Some Relevant Details

Be prepared to tell #mIRC the answers to the following questions: What version of Windows are you using and which version of mIRC^®? Where did you get your winsock? Did they tell you it was 16-bit or 32-bit winsock? From where did you obtain your mIRC^®? Are you using mIRC.exe or mIRC32.exe? Try to put such information, when relevant, in the same message to the channel as your question, so that people will not have to fish all over their screen to piece you together.

Careful Showing Your Code

If you need help programming your aliases or remote, describe in English what it is that your code is supposed to accomplish, and paste the exact code to the channel, if it is only a few lines (more may be considered a flood). It may also help to type the relevant line that you are referring to in mIRC.hlp, the FAQ, or other mIRC documentation (versions.txt, mirccmds.txt, readme.txt). Generally, you will not have much luck if you paste more than 5-10 words of code to the channel. People are usually not much interested in puzzling out more than that amount in this environment. Make it as easy to read as possible, renaming variables to something vaguely English, and trimming off all irrelevant fluff. Paste to the channel any error messages or erroneous results, if it is not more than a line or so.

When and Where to Ask

You don't need permission to pose a question, or to announce that you are about to ask something. Just dive right in. Your best bet is to state your actual question or problem as clearly as possible to the channel in #mIRC, where the most people are likely to see you, and then those most able and available to help will identify themselves, eventually. If no response, then you make the question easier to answer. Tell what you're doing and the result.

Attention Seeking Gimmicks

Ask just one time. If you get no response after several minutes, try again. Then wait for another time of day. Asking more often might be considered a flood, especially during busy times. Don't use all caps, excessive non-alphanumeric characters, asciiart, bold, underline, or bright colors if you want to avoid setting off our sensitive insanity detection equipment. Please do not send notices, mass queries or sounds to all of #mIRC. Many of us work on other projects & problems while here, and your doing that may disturb their concentration on another matter. Meanwhile..., it seems that those who are most visible helping others are the ones who tend to get noticed first when they have questions of their own. (Go figure! :)

Designating Your Answerer

Please, don't encourage folks to direct their questions to only certain people. Our goal is to make this an environment where users can learn to help themselves and each other. We recommend everyone ask their questions to the channel, and anyone who thinks they might know any part of the answer is encouraged to try to help. If you direct your question to a specific person, nobody else will even try to answer it, thinking it's not for them to butt in. If the one you chose doesn't know, you're out of luck.

Messaging Others for Help

Please accept that many of the people who offer help may wish to speak to you in the channel only. Of course, some questions are best answered in a one-to-one environment, particularly if more than a few lines of code are involved, but usually the user should be able to home in on problem to within a few lines, without having to involve others. Although people may send private notices to you (to which no return response is expected or desired), trying to get you to provide more relevant information to the channel, please do not ask for help via private notice or query. Volunteers choose the questions to which they will respond, and private notices may make them feel unduly put-upon. People shouldn't feel that just because they answered some question for you, they now have to marry you. Please, don't ask on the channel for some general or specific helper to message you. Let it be their idea.

Fairly High Tolerance Level

On #mIRC, we're often more tolerant of apparently rude behavior, here, than you might wish to be in your own home channels, because we get many visitors who truly don't know any better, and need to be directed to #newbies, #new2IRC, #new2mIRC or #Computer_Help to answer their general IRC questions or to address their 'not ready for prime-time' behavior. Since recommendations to go to these channels are often taken as an affront... * Dancr clears throat and does the voice of The Wicked Witch of the West: These things must be handled delicately, or you'll break the spell!

Correct Behavior Privately

One of our most annoying problems happens when fairly new users tell the even newer ones, on open channel, how poorly they're behaving, and a war of words breaks out over ¿quien es más lame? (who's the lamer?). Calling anyone lame is likely to elicit a kick for the name caller. If you think someone's behavior needs to be corrected, and it does not appear that any operator is paying attending to the situation, please inform the offender politely, in private, giving them every benefit of the doubt, and assuming that they simply don't know any better, and not that they are actually trying to be rude. It doesn't hurt to provide them a face saving 'out.' What we don't tolerate is intentional rudeness.

Consider the Lag Factor

We often have to remind ourselves that bad behavior can sometimes be explained by lag. If we have the time, the operators do try to warn our visitors when they're engaging in offensive behavior. If there are only few alert operators or the channel is very busy (e.g., just after a new release), we may not have the luxury of giving warnings. We will often ping someone just after addressing their question or problem behavior, and then not take further corrective action until seeing that the offender has had an opportunity to see our warning or answer.

Unauthorized Advertising

Please, don't 'advertise' (i.e. even mention sites, channels, servers, networks, web-space, programs, modules, trades, offers, announcements, sounds, how much you love your real or pretend master, new or used computer parts, anything that's 'free,' job seeking, employment offers and especially anything about your own sexiness) to #mIRC visitors. We screen all material offered to mIRC^® users to ensure that it is safe and appropriate. Since we are true gourmet connoisseurs, it may take a while for us to get around to sampling your spam. As you can probably imagine, we have quite a backlog, particularly of the last two categories; and on these items especially, we simply have to check your claim out ourselves!

Speak English Even If Broken

Only English and mIRC are spoken on #mIRC. If your English is not strong, try your best. We will not allow anyone to ridicule your genuine attempt. Users of MiXeDuP tExT, L33t (elite "fonts"), sdrawkcab (backwards) or Ebonics/Medieval generators will be dealt with harshly, tho (at least by some of us).

Keep Noise Making Down

Please do not test your scripts, on #mIRC. It's hard for others to follow along with what you're doing, and so appears to the rest of us as just so much noise. Go to someplace like #mIRCtests for that, if you like. We usually do not mind if mIRC^® users are idle, but do not drop your anti-idle text into the channel. It's pure trash to us. Before writing any text which is to appear automatically, consider what IRC would be like if lots of people followed your example. We do not permit auto-greets either in the channel or privately to our visitors. Also, please do not manually greet strangers. Greet your friends privately. [Edited '03-Sep-27th to add:] Also, away messages suck.[end edit]

Hold the Useless Reports

Don't announce to all users normal stuff that we see for ourselves, such as what the date and time are now where you are, joins ("SoAndSo has just joined #mIRC!"), parts ("Good riddance! $nick was a pain, anyway."), quits ("Split!!!!!"), oppings ("You know you're in trouble when $nick has ops!"), serverops ("Hey!! No serverops!" or "Lame takeover attempt!"), the size of the ban list or the channel ("Oh! Lots of people, here!"), who has clones, or other channel statistics..., whether happening here or elsewhere. No channel that's existed more than a few minutes appreciates any of that stuff.

Let Disturbing Posts Die

Please, don't complain about or paste onto open channel, either manually or auto, any material that is coming to you privately, whether through message (query), invite, notice or CTCP. Respond to that person directly, outside the channel. If you're being flooded or otherwise annoyed by something on your own screen, don't annoy the rest of us with it, too, or give the user even more publicity or notoriety. Type /ignore AnnoyNick 3 to not see anything from them even if they change their nick, or message privately to a single active (i.e. speaking) #mIRC chanop about it.

Automatically Kick-able Offenses

Some behaviors are so universally considered offensive [broken link], that we do not wait to see if you will cooperate and stop. We kick first and ask questions later. These offenses include: cloning, vulgar language, nicks or user IDs, "asciiart", excess color, repeating, scrolling or otherwise flooding the channel or our users, polling the users for opinions to be expressed on the channel about anything (but especially if off topic and most especially if about age/sex/location), asking for everyone to type something such as !YerNick, !seen or !8-ball, abusive tricks targeted at naive users, inviting to join another channel, or begging (asking to be op'd). We reserve the right to change this list at whim.

Inconsistency of Treatment

We have no creed to which all of the ops must adhere when it comes to what we may allow or disallow. Our ops are chosen for their ability to think independently. Therefore, you may occasionally annoy an op, for doing something that another op doesn't mind, or even something that you've seen another op or other user do. That's life. As far as the rest of us are concerned, that op may ban you for something no more significant than how they imagine that you part your hair. This is our home and first priority is our own serenity.

When You Yourself Trigger a Ban

The op who bans you or kicks you may not actually be the one you've offended, since we operate on a kind of mental telepathy, here. You'll sometimes be nailed by whomever is closest. We also do not second guess each other, so are unlikely to remove a ban laid down by another op. Most of us will /ignore messages from anyone seeking to be unbanned. Your position as a banee is rather bleak. If the ban is not removed within a minute or so, then try to learn from your mistake (if the offended op was kind enough to include a reason in the kick) and feel welcome again later in the day (probably). Your ban time may vary. When you finally get back in, don't be annoying by asking questions about the ban. We'll probably have no idea who you are, even if any of the same ops are active. Most other channels operate about this same way.

If Whole Site is Banned/"Shit-listed"

We ban by as narrow as possible portions of a user's host.domain. Sometimes, somebody at a particular internet service provider [ISP] is such a nuisance that we resort to banning their entire site. (We may be trying to put the screws to that ISP to drop the abusive user as a customer. This can be effective strategy for a help channel, but probably won't work for your channel.) We don't make a practice of taking time away from helping folks to search our logs for reasons. Some of us are willing to help in private messages most anyone who's been banned. Even the ones who caused the ban.

Occasional Social Banter

A low level of silly repartee among ops and channel regulars is a normal aspect of the channel and considered just part of the show. The second half of our topic is often frivolous. If you're a stranger, feel free to join in on the fun. However, such merrymaking must take a back seat to helping, so occasional crack-downs are to be expected. Please, do not engage in full-blown off topic conversations with friends or make small talk with enticing new strangers, on the channel. Message them privately.

Frequently Unanswered Questions [FUQs]

FUQ #1: How do I

join a channel?
FUQ #2: Why don't they like me at #DontLikeU?
FUQ #3: I have question. Message me.
FUQ #4: Who is the best expert here?
FUQ #5: How do I use mIRC^®?
FUQ #6: Why won't you Op me?
FUQ #7: Where d'ya live? Can I call you?
FUQ #8: How do you nick collide?
FUQ #9: Who here has server ops?
FUQ 10: Does Khaled IRC? His nick?

We're All Volunteers, Here

Please understand that nobody gets paid for helping you on #mIRC. The Operators may be away from the keyboard or helping other users in private messages. Most users are on several channels or web browsing and talking to their friends while waiting to have their own questions answered, and not paying close attention to your problem. You'll have to make it as easy as possible for them to help you. And then wait patiently.

You're More than Welcome

The best thanks you can offer is to stay on the channel for a while or visit sometime when you're not too busy and pick off whatever questions you can answer.