How to use IRC effectively

The IRC channels: purposes of each channel

Drupal uses the FreeNode IRC network, irc.freenode.net, and occupies the following channels:

• #drupal for general Drupal discussion. This includes primarily all coding questions, but also topics about promotion, advocacy, infrastructure, and general Drupal community questions. (For which modules and other support type questions see #drupal-support)
• #drupal-dev is also for code discussions but is designated as a quiet place when two or more people need space to hash out some issues and #drupal is too noisy. In general, coding belongs in #drupal despite the name.
• #drupal-support for support. Help for anything you can do with Drupal inside the web-based admin screens is best found here.
• #drupal-themes for theme support. If you have a question about how to create, modify or distribute your themes, then this is the place to go.
• #drupal-dojo for the Drupal Dojo group. This is where dojo lessons are discussed and organized.
• #drupal-docs for the Documentation team to discuss and organize working on the drupal.org handbooks.
• #drupal-consultants for Drupal Consultants. You can find paid help here, as well as advice on best practices and general discussions surrounding the business side of Drupal. Ask questions here only if you're willing to pay for the advice.
• #drupal-ecommerce for the E-commerce Group
• #drupal-ubercart for Ubercart support and development
• #drupal-la for the Los Angeles Drupal group

Courtesy

Drupal is a community and IRC is one means to communicate and interact with others. There are men and women of all ages and it is best to remember to treat others with respect and courtesy, as you would in any other community.

To learn more about how to actually get connected to IRC, there is a good write up on finding a good client and connecting to IRC at http://groups.drupal.org/node/2326. The intention of this book page is how to interact once you get connected to IRC.

There are a few simple IRC commands that should be used to allow best use of the IRC channels.

Register your nick with Freenode

When you log into IRC you're going to want to register your name with NickServ so no one else can use your nick, and others can gain familiarity with you by you using the same nick. Learn how to register your nick at http://freenode.net/faq.shtml#nicksetup

Use the same IRC nick that you use with drupal.org

Most people use their Drupal user name as their nick in IRC. If that name is already taken on Freenode, then append an underscore to the name. For example my Druple username is tomf, but that was not available on freenode. I've registered my IRC nick as tomf__ (two underscores, my nick with one underscore was not available either). Having a familiar nick allows for consistency between IRC and the drupal sites.

Chatting

You'll often see people performing actions in IRC. Unlike talking normally, actions say to the IRC channel something that you're doing. You precede the action with /me. For example: "/me shakes fist in the air in frustration about learning IRC".

Chatting directly with another user

If you want to message someone directly within the channel, precede your message with their nick:. This will alert the person that they have a message especially for them, and makes it easier for the person receiving the message to read it in a busy channel. For example: "tomf__: I'm speaking directly to tomf__". You can also use tab completion when typing in an IRC nick. Type the first couple of letters in someone's nick and then hit <tab>, and voila, your IRC client has finished typing the rest of the nick. If there is more than one nick that contains the first couple letters you typed in, keep hitting <tab> until you find the nick you want.

If you need to message someone directly, outside of the channel, precede your message with /msg nick. You should only message someone privately if the conversation does not concern the rest of the channel. Do not message anyone privately for support. To message someone privately you type: "/msg tomf__ hey, how was the game?".

A general courtesy is to request permission before sending a private message (PM) to someone. This is as simple as tomf__: hey, pm?.

To chat with an unregistered nick, you need send a message to NickServ to set the Unfiltered variable ON:

/msg nickserv set unfiltered on

Filtering helps you a bit when spambots invade Freenode, but as this is quite rare these days, there is little harm in keeping unfiltered on.

Asking questions

The motto for Drupal IRC chat is "Don't ask to ask, just ask." All you need to do is start asking. If you want an answer faster, here are a few tips:

• Make your question clear. Avoid extremely short questions. Some times typing out a paragraph or two may be necessary.
• Avoid typos, if at all possible.
• Have some patience. Most of the people in the IRC channels are doing several things already, besides helping in the chat rooms.
• Ask the Druplicon bot (see below).

Set an away message when you aren't available

If you're going to step away from your computer for a bit, but want to keep IRC open so you can scroll back to see the message log, you should set yourself to away. You precede your away message with /away to set yourself away. For example: "/away I'm out to lunch for a bunch of munch". To come back from away status just type "/away" with nothing after it.

The IRC bots

The bot in the drupal irc channels is Druplicon. The bot is run by Morbus, and if there are any weird problems, contact him. Druplicon uses the bot module.

You can use the bot to answer questions for you. The bot will automatically look up a node for you on drupal.org if you type a node id such as "#12345" or "4321", but only if that is the entirety of the message and the number is at least 4 digits.

You can also ask the bot the last time someone was seen. If someone asks "seen peter", "seen peter? seen lois?", "have you seen sbippy?" or similar questions, the bot will report the last time they've been seen, where, and what their last known message was. They will only respond if the "seen Name" trigger is followed by a question mark or if the message immediately ends thereafter.

Have the bot answer questions for you.

You can also have Druplicon remember definitions for you. If you constantly are saying the same thing over and over in the support channel, and don't feel like typing the same response over and over, have Druplicon remember the answer. You set this up by typing "keyword" is "definition" to Druplicon . For example: "Druplicon: irchelp is You can find a very informative book page about IRC help in the handbook."

Now if some one were to ask about irc help in the channel, one would only have to type "irchelp?" to have Druplicon automatically answer with "You can find a very informative book page about IRC help in the handbook." To have Druplicon forget about that definition just tell Druplicon to forget about it by doing by "Druplicon: forget irchelp"

IRC is a great place to feel like you're part of the community, and you can learn a lot by just lurking in the channels to start with.