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How to get useful help on IRC

IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is a real-time chat service where you can talk to other people from around the planet. Although many channels deal with small talk about the weather, girl/boy/SO friends and politics, there are IRC networks and channels that are dedicated to providing support for software or an operating system. irc.debian.org, for example, exists to support Free Software projects.

If you need urgent help or just don't want to use a mailing list, you are welcome on IRC. IRC has existed for many years, evolving over time.

It may appear like a hot tub of completely random people at first. This page is meant to help you understand how IRC works socially and how to get the most out of it.

Here are some tips - please try to help us to help you!

Code of Conduct

First: like most Debian-related events, forums and communication channels, Debian IRC channels and those who use them are subject to the Debian Code of Conduct. Please be respectful and act reasonably and with consideration for others. If you don't, people may ask you to improve your behaviour. Similarly, you should also expect others to behave reasonably.

If problems do occur, there should be IRC operators (ops) who can help. Ask in #debian-ops if you need to.

Persistent misbehaviour may lead to bans and other punishments.

Don't ask to ask

It's normal to ask questions like "May I ask a question?" or "Can anyone help me?" in normal face-to-face interactions. However, it's not very useful in IRC where there could be many conversations going on in parallel and users may be focussing on different things. It's typically much more effective to simply ask your question right away.

Be precise

Vague descriptions of problems are difficult to work with. Simply saying "My printer doesn't work." or "My mail server doesn't work.". doesn't give enough information for anybody to understand your problem to be able to help.

Instead, try to include information like the following:

If you include more details like this, you will have a much better chance of getting a useful reply.

Tell people what you are doing

Others only know what you tell them - they can't directly see what you're doing on your system. If you change things silently, nobody will know about it. Try to be 100% clear in what you're doing - if you're trying to get help, you need to work with the people offering support.

Do not flood the channel - use a pastebin

Sometimes you need to show others more than one line - perhaps parts of your configuration files or a log file. Please never just copy and paste larger amounts of text right into the channel. It's not likely to work well, and you'll obscure other conversations happening in parallel. Depending on the channel, you might even be kicked out for doing this.

Instead, please always use a pastebin. Pastebins are public services (web sites) where you can paste your text and everybody can access them as a URL. Paste your contents there and send the URL into the channel. That should allow everybody who's interested to take a look. Please don't paste it without any comment. Instead, add an explanation, for example: "Emails seem to get lost since I installed program foobar. Please take a look: http://paste.debian.net/..."

The Debian pastebin is:

If the Debian pastebin is unavailable, other people in the channel may be able to suggest another one that you can use. There are also similar sites for pasting image like screenshots where they are relevant - ask if you can't find one.

Wait for an answer

It can happen quite frequently that a person enters a channel, asks a question, then waits a minute and if nobody answers they quit. Lots of people see the question in their backlog, but are unable to answer because that person is not present any more. This situation can be very frustrating.

Keep in mind that most people listed in a given channel are NOT necessarily reading the channel at that very moment. If you want to get an answer, please be patient and be prepared to wait for a while. Sometimes a useful answer can come after a few hours! You may be asking for support when knowledgeable people are asleep or otherwise busy.

On a related note, please also check your IRC history. The answer may have been passed to you when you were away from the keyboard or busy doing something else.

Read the /topic

Your IRC client will likely show you the "topic" of a channel when you enter it. You may find some useful information about how this channel is supposed to work; it may often list URLs for FAQs and documentation. If there are FAQ URLs listed in the topic, please first look there to see if your question is already answered.

Do not be demanding

Please do not expect a single person to stay online until your problem is fixed. IRC is a stateless medium and asynchronous. Anyone can quit at any time, or be called away to other tasks. People stay there because they like staying there. Nobody is paid for helping you, these are all volunteers. Some might be Debian developers, others may be Debian users who are sharing their experience and trying to help others.

And a related matter:

Do not /msg people without asking

You can either talk to others in a channel publicly or /msg them privately. However, the latter is often considered rude. Please don't occupy a single person for your purpose. Others may also be interested in a solution to your problem, and more than one person might be able to help you.

Unintended rudeness

Sometimes you may feel that others are rude. You may get a response like "Reinstall the package. Restart the service. Read the /usr/share/doc/mysoftware/README." Although this is a very brief reply, it is probably not intended to be rude. IRC is often like stripped down human interaction without all the friendly bits. Other people have probably answered your question and others a dozen times that day and may just want to help you solve your problem quickly, not become close friends with you.

Please don't be offended by this. They generally don't mean to offend you.

If you think people are deliberately being rude, then say so.

Try not to repeat yourself

Asking the same question many times is annoying. If anyone in the channel isn't paying attention then they're also not likely to read you the second or third time. And those who came back from time away will likely see in their "lastlog" what has been going on previously.

Repeating a question over and over can feel too demanding and may just cause people to ignore you.

Speak English (by default)

In most channels the language spoken is English. There are some channels like #debian-fr which are specifically for French. But everywhere else you should stick to English. It doesn't matter if your English is bad! After all, most people in the world speak something other than English as their first language.

If you do need more help than your English will handle, people may point you to a more appropriate channel for your language.

If you find another person that speaks your language, please do not start to talk in your language in an English channel (unless to redirect them to a more appropriate language-specific IRC channel). If you do so, please also add an explanation in English of what you have done.

Read the documentation

If people tell you to read the documentation then you should do so. Never say: "I'm too lazy. Come on. You all know what I need to do. Just tell me what I need to do." It's rude and wastes volunteer time. However, you can expect to be told where to find the documentation.

If you're given a pointer to documentation, then please read it. If the documentation is too technical or you don't understand exactly what it's saying then it's fine to come back and ask for further help, for example: "I have read chapter 3.1 of the URL you gave me and I understand how virtual domains work in general. But how would I use both virtual and non-virtual domains together?"

Stay if you can

Using IRC is a matter of give and take. At the beginning you may have many questions on lots of topics. Ask those questions and be grateful if you get attention and replies. Most people appreciate being told that their response was useful. Others do not expect more than a simple "Thank you." for their help.

However, if you can, please consider staying online in the channel to extend help to others. The more knowledge you gain, the more you can help other people. It's good to help the community in this way!

Answer the questions that you're asked

It may sometimes be hard to follow all the conversation on IRC. If people are trying to help you and need to ask you a few questions, please try to answer them all. If you are asked three questions and only answer one, or keep asking your original question time and again (showing that you don't read responses), you risk being ignored. Show some initiative and your problem will likely be fixed within a few minutes.

Tell others about the solution

It doesn't help anyone if you just say "Never mind, found it." and quit the channel. Please tell others what the solution to your problem was so everybody can learn from it!

As noted above, IRC communication can be quite brief and to the point. If any solution is complex, perhaps consider writing a blog post or adding a page to the Debian wiki or to other documentation to explain more to other people as appropriate.

Not everybody is an expert

When getting responses be careful about who you trust. Some people just want to feel important and reply to you although they have no more knowledge than you do. Some people may even be jokers who want to be funny by giving you bad advice, e.g. telling you how to erase your harddisk.

See also:

-- ChristophHaas 2005-10-14 21:19:12 (original at http://workaround.org)