Hi all,
I recently decided to rejoin IRC, and it was complicated and glitchy. It
took weeks of troubleshooting and a manual re-set from pastly, who was
working with someone at OFTC. Many thanks to phoul and pastly for their
kindness and help. I know that it takes one minute or less for a very
experienced person to start and troubleshoot a new account on IRC, and I
am not that person.
I have written a short guide for people who have never used--and maybe
never heard of--IRC before. You can forward this email (or whatever
final version is developed) to friends who want to volunteer for Tor but
are daunted by IRC. The persona I'm focusing on:
**A person who has not used IRC before and may or may not be
technical.** (I’m starting with English, but other languages are needed
as well.)
The goal is to get new people up and running, talking on IRC to Tor
people, in real time, with as little frustration as possible.
There are also cultural aspects to IRC that require explanation to
prevent frustration, so below I have linked to a couple websites that
can help. Moving people from webchat to a special client is a project
for another time.
Please send your input, focused on this hapless individual who has never
used IRC before but wants to help Tor. I wonder if there are better docs
on IRC culture? Apologies in advance for anything that is annoyingly
inaccurate. Can fix!