I still very much like IRC as a means of group communication/interacting with a community among other things. However, I've been really uninvolved with any community on a real level for a long time, so I don't really have anywhere to go to just relax and chat. That's why I made this thread.

I want to know what various channels you guys frequent and enjoy. ^.^

IRC? Damn, ain't that thing old? I remember using it for Adventure Quest but sadly never used it beyond that. I wonder how IRC is holding up these days? Do many people still use it?

IRC? Channels? Like, TV? Radio? Chatroom?

I dunno what you're speaking of.

Internet Relay Chat... some old thing that people used to troll each other before youtube or some other crap

Ah, IRC. I used that a lot way way back when. I haven't used it in years and years since I decided I no longer wanted to do real time chat. I don't do IM, which seems to be thing these days.

There was plenty of trolling but it was commonly used to make "chat rooms" (channels) - in ye olde days, internet forums were these rather simple and crude programs, and a lot of gamers liked to meet up in chatrooms instead to chat about their fave game. You had chatroom mods that could kick people out of the room, and chat privately with someone in a separate window while still being in the main "room" etc. Mostly, however, it was a plethora of general hobby/chat rooms, and of course, you also had the thousands of pervy channels.

I'm mostly an IRC lurker of various channels, none of which would interest most people here.

Also set up a freenode channel a few weeks ago

Many places on the IRC-verse are quite active still. IRC in a lot of ways is still superior to most other chatroom programs.

Skype?

Skype is okay but it's kinda buggy.

I once used IRC in 1996. I didn't get any work done for a week. I haven't gone near it since.

No, Skype is not an IRC program. Skype would probably crash if you were to try and use it for some channels I've seen on IRC

IRC is older than I am, to put it in perspective. But it remains one of the most powerful and versatile methods of multichat.

But could someone try to explain properly and easily what it is all about? It's from way before my time, that's for sure.
Is it a big chatroom or something? Video calling?

There is an #elderscrolls channel on irc.chatspike.net which I visit, and that's pretty much it. Even have a link to it in my signature

I remember using a telnet program - having to put in specific IP numbers to connect - to text chat with someone in Canada once. Can't remember why. I think at the time I was using this O/S where that was kinda the only option available.

Anyway, I'm kinda like Vometia ... IRC was much worse for me than occasionally visiting/posting on forums and can be a very obsessive thing to do depending on your personality - so I quit.

Do you know of any good networking channels?

Never heard of IRC until reading this! So... never used it I don't think.

When I did it, it was all text-based. You could share files tho. It was big thing at one time to insert little .wav sounds in your chat, like punctuation.
Tech-side of it, Defron would have to explain, or you can wikipedia it. But yes, text-based real-time chat room technology.

It's a lightweight and, as DEFRON put it, very versatile protocol. Channel's are server unique and a channel is basically a 'room' of sorts. Text-based chat with good file-transfer capabilities but that doesn't really describe it well. Really, you'd just have to use it.

Pretty sure some things take IRC and use it as a the underlying protocol. I kind of assumed some streaming sites did that with their chats.

It's basically a big text-based chatroom. Over the years with the help of bots and a few other protocols being integrated, it has gained some new features (some client-specific). Things like trigger commands will cause automated actions from bots, file transfers, and initiate room games of various sorts. All depends on the channel, though.

Forums have taken the place of chat rooms.

IRC was good back in the day of dial up and limited server space. However, the main thing that I hated about Chat Rooms was wading through all the other conversations going on to stay on topic with who ever I was talking to. Plus, most conversations were gone once they were done, or the next day so there was no continuance.

The last chat session I saw was on a Yahoo games site where I was playing some poker and some pool. The chat room was supposed to be about the game, but it was just 3 types of people, those trying to get laid, those posting links to products I don't want, and people just throwing out insults. I was not involved and seeing what people were saying did not lead me to want to be involved.

I havent stopped using IRC since 1998.

Forums too slow and lack the fluidity of chatrooms for some forms of chat It's why all the cool forums (not this one ) have a chatbox embedded in it. Lurker's Lair, for example, would be much better suited to IRC than a thread on here.

plus /msg does dandy for one-on-one chatting on IRC


Hey, I started using it in 2008

I logged most of my idling on IRC. I think I deleted them all a few years ago.

That's what IM's are for. However, that is not as good for Ad Hoc conversations with strangers as you are alluding to.