Community Rooms: Definitions of Terms

Chat

Both email and newsgroups allow you to send and receive messages at your convenience. In other words, you need not be at your computer the moment a message is received because it will be stored for you to read whenever you like. The Internet has a more interactive method of communication called Internet Relay Chat (IRC). This type of "chatting" is similar to telephone conferencing, except that users type instead of talk. In fact, it goes beyond telephone conferencing because many people may be interacting at the same time. Despite its seemingly frivolous nature, IRC has proven to be a useful tool for business, education, and news discussion. For example, IRC has been used extensively for live coverage of world events, natural disasters, and sports commentary. It also serves as an inexpensive substitute for long distance phone calls. People from all over the world use IRC. 

Discussion groups on IRC are called channels and they exist only as long as people are participating in them. Anyone can create a new channel and thus become the operator of that channel. Operators have special privileges, such as being able to deny access to certain people and moderate all communication. Some channels are private, while others are public and open to anyone; the operator decides. IRC channels have names that begin with a #. For example, here are a few IRC channels: #atlanta, #comics, #disney, #guitar, #India, #nicecafe, and #xf (for The X-Files TV show fans). To use IRC, you need an IRC program (called a client) on your computer and (of course) a connection to the Internet. You also need to know which IRC network you want to use (there are several, with EFnet and Undernet being the most popular) and which channel you want to use. When you join a channel, you choose a nickname for yourself. Then, everything you type, prefaced with your nickname, will be seen by everyone on the channel. And you will get to see everything typed by everyone else on the channel. It all happens in real-time, with participants identified only by nickname, who may be anywhere in the world.   

   
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