IRC subculture - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

IRC subculture refers to the particular set of social features common to interaction on the various Internet Relay Chat

Internet Relay Chat

Internet Relay Chat is a protocol for real-time Internet text messaging or synchronous conferencing. It is mainly designed for group communication in discussion forums, called channels, but also allows one-to-one communication via private message as well as chat and data transfer, including file...

(IRC) systems across the world, and the culture

Organizational culture

Organizational culture is defined as “A pattern of shared basic assumptions invented, discovered, or developed by a given group as it learns to cope with its problems of external adaptation and internal integration" that have worked well enough to be considered valid and therefore, to be taught to...

associated with them.

Overview

Internet Relay Chat is an Internet-based chat system that has existed in one form or another since 1988. Networks are connected groups of IRC servers which share a common userbase. Channels are the "chat rooms" on said networks. IRC channel operators (commonly referred to as chops or chanops) are the individuals who run any given channel.

While there are many different IRC networks, and across those networks there are usually large numbers of IRC channels, there are some unifying features common to the social structures of them all. Many of the features of the IRC subculture mesh with other Internet subculture

Subculture

In sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, a subculture is a group of people with a culture which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong.- Definition :...

s, such as various forum subcultures. This is especially prevalent in IRC channels or networks that are directly related to other Internet phenomena, such as an IRC channel created by and for the users of a particular Internet forum

Internet forum

An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are at least temporarily archived...

Communication on IRC

IRC has much in common with a regular in-person conversation. It is real-time many-on-many communication that is not logged by the server for posterity (many IRC clients do offer a logging feature, but the logs are generally then not publicly available). Some bots may also feature logging facilities. Users on IRC usually refer to users "say" something (instead of posting it) to reflect the similarity with face-to-face communication.

Because IRC is a text-based communication medium, the obvious limitation of this metaphor is that the participants of a conversation on IRC do not actually see or hear each other, so alternative ways must be employed to convey the information that would otherwise be gained from facial expressions, tones of voice, and other audio-visual clues. It is common practice among IRC users to use emoticons, pseudo-XML tags (for example ...) or actions (such as *smile* or *grin*) to achieve this. Other notations common to text only media are common on IRC, such as using asterisks around *words or phrases to be emphasized*, /using slashes around words or phrases/ to simulate italics, and imparting PARTICULAR EMPHASIS to something by writing it in all capitals. Some clients also respond to "percent notations," such as pairs of %B around bold text, %I surrounding italicized text, or %C to change the text color. In these cases, a graphical environment may be required (as text terminals typically don't have such rendering capabilities as italics and color).

Orthographical and grammatical mistakes are generally not frowned upon as much on IRC as they are in other kinds of Internet forums, given the informal and temporary nature of them. If the conversation is going at a decent speed, it is not practical to correct every typo. It is similar to many instant messaging

Instant messaging

Instant Messaging is a form of real-time direct text-based chatting communication in push mode between two or more people using personal computers or other devices, along with shared clients. The user's text is conveyed over a network, such as the Internet...

networks.

Social Structure

Often users will visit the same channel regularly and form strong emotional ties to the other regulars of that channel.

Having certain privileges on IRC is often considered a status symbol. The server administrators (those with administrative access to the IRC servers) and the IRC operators appointed by them thus have the highest status. Within the individual channels the channel operators then have a higher status than the regular users. Sometimes it is channel policy to "voice" users (add to the user's mode) in order to denote them as helpers or channel regulars, even though the channel is not in moderated mode.
On many networks a channel service keeps a record of levels that operators on a given channel have, which imposes an even more differentiated structure. In certain cases, being given operator status on a channel, or being promoted to a higher level operator, is considered a social reward rather than for intent of functioning as a more privileged user. Being kicked (forcibly parted) or even banned from a channel is considered punishment.

Variations

While many aspects of IRC subculture are common across the entire community, many aspects are specific to particular networks, channels, or groups of channels.

Specific networks

Some networks have specific sets of etiquette

Etiquette

Etiquette is a code of behavior that delineates expectations for social behavior according to contemporary conventional norms within a society, social class, or group...

, guidelines and quirks that vary from those of other networks. For example, atopical channels on general networks like EFnet tend to haze their new users more aggressively than topical channels on networks like freenode

Freenode

freenode, formerly known as Open Projects Network, is an IRC network used to discuss peer-directed projects. Their servers are all accessible from the domain name [irc://chat.freenode.net chat.freenode.net], which load balances connections by using the actual servers in rotation...

Specific channels

Some channels have specific sets of etiquette and guidelines that vary from those of other channels.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.