What is IRC?

It's an acronym for Internet Relay Chat. It is a real-time discussion system within The Internet, designed originally to be a replacement for the nix talk program that was used for users on a machine to communicate in real-time (messages and replies faster than e-mail provides for)

My involvement with IRC is that I (Mysidia) am an IRC Operator on SorceryNet, where I also act as a coding director and help maintain the server software.

Unlike the world wide web, IRC involves a direct, personal interaction, and unlike e-mail, that interaction occurs in real time, as if you were talking to that person over the telephone.

The real-time nature of IRC means that interactions occur quickly, so heated discussions can be held, and questions can be asked, answered, and followed up on rapidly in comparison to other mediums, making it the ideal medium for any sort of online interview, debate, or Q&A (Question and Answers) session.

It also means that you can request a file or document and be sent it immediately, the delay you have with sending and receiving e-mail is non-existent with IRC.

The disadvantage of IRC, however, is that the connection must be continuous for you to receive messages -- you can't in general stop using the medium, and later pull up an archive of the discussion you missed, and unlike the web, IRC does not have a mechanism for posting images, sounds, or other media inline.

Technical problems that have yet to be resolved in the medium itself, unfortunately, make it scale so poorly, that a single IRC network can hold no more than 60,000 users online at a time without beginning to experience problems such as reduced response times and network instability.

A little goal of mine is actually to see IRC rebuilt as a system to rival the world wide web in scalability, but, unfortunately, the difficulties in having standards made (not even considering convincing the hundreds of IRC networks and millions of IRC users to accept them), are quite large.

Another disadvantage is that on most networks, there are enough "hostiles" about to cause problems -- in general, these are hacker wannabes, IRC Warriors, software/music pirates, and various other sorts of people who seem to take it upon themselves to abuse the medium and make it less appealing in the process.

It is important for IRC users to understand the software they are using (by reading the documentation, FAQs, and helpfiles beforehand!), and realize that many people on IRC are not to be trusted, because there is almost complete anonymity for non-administrative users, even where people seem friendly, they may be abusing the medium. Abusers commonly attempt various sorts of attacks against others, the most serious abuses IRCers have to worry about include:

• Taking control over users computers by having them type out complex commands or convincing them to install irc scripts that are actually malicious "remote control" programs.

• Collecting passwords by pretending to be administrative or part of the IRC system (for example, using nicknames (pseudonyms) like "System").

• Stalking other users.

• Knocking people off IRC by sending out lots of text (visually: scrolling garbage).

• Taking down users'/ISPs' Internet connections (illegally), DOS attacks. Which have come to be recognized as a threat to The Internet itself (best to use a network that provides address masking, and learn how to use it!).

Despite these problems caused by some users, however, IRC offers a unique opportunity to meet and communicate quickly and directly with people from various cultures, wherever you both have a common language (the vast majority of IRC users can read and write English to some degree).

If interested further, see http://www.valinor.sorcery.net/ for a good chunk of information on IRC, including:

• IRC Information and Glossary
• Software information
• Technical information

Also irc.netsplit.de has statistics on the various networks and their links page connects to some of the better IRC resources on The Internet.

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