IRC at 52°North
The
Internet Relay Chat is a protocol for real-time text messaging with multiple users - an online chat!
Channel #52north
52°North has a channel at freenode open to anybody, from staff via members of the network and users of 52°North software to anybody interested in geospatial open source software.
Join
You do not need an account, just start an IRC client, connect to
freenode (
irc://chat.freenode.net), and join the channel
#52north by typing
/join #52north
.
And hang up posters!
52n-join-irc.pdf and
52n-join-irc.svg
Usage
There are many
user guides for IRC in the internet and for
freenode, so we'll just provide a very short introduction and some pointers here.
Software
Many different clients for IRC exist (see a list), but for beginners and Firefox users we can recommend
Chatzilla (see also this
short user guide). It runs as a Firefox extension and can be easily installed.
Commands
IRC is old school internet, so if you want to use it more the most efficient way is to take a look at the textual
commands. The software listed above can help you with most of these commands though.
Nicknames
We recommend to register your preferred nickname so that no other users can use it on freenode. This increases recognizability. You find all
information on user and nickname registration on the freenode website.
52°North staff usually makes their affiliation visible by attaching
_52n
to their chat name. Feel free to do the same for your organization! And of course you are very welcome to approach members with such a nickname directly if you have any questions.
Bot
Of course we have our own bot in the channel,
bot_52n. You can issue commands starting with a ! character, for example
!help
.
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