What is IRC?! (Don't laugh at me plz!)

[ConfusedOfLife]

Ok guys, let's make a stupid of myself and ask this question. They say asking isn't bad, it's not knowing that is the real bad thing. I DO NOT KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT IRC, I only know that it's a chat thing, but only after downloading winbot I realized that it should be really different with ICQ or Yahoo Messanger! This program looks so confusing and I have no idea what a channel mean, how I should connect and what's this jargon like oping ppl or lots of other stuff. Can anyone give me a hint or a link related to the history of this IRC or how I can use it?

Thank you!

[super kobs]

Here's the perfect link for you....

http://irchelp.org/irchelp/new2irc.html

[ConfusedOfLife]

Thanks for that beautiful link. I'm going to delve into it and I hope I can learn what I was looking for.

Thanks again,
bijan

[super kobs]

No problem. When I first used IRC I was totally confused on all of the commands until I read RFC 1459

[phoztech]

plz make sure you turn off the "auto accept files" functionality that comes with most IRC clients... if you dont you will find yourself in a world of hurt...

also if you are doing this to obtain software mp3z or movies ... please remember big brother is always watching ... take the neccassary precautions...

[ConfusedOfLife]

Thank you phoztech for the advice, I read it in the mIRC manual and turned it off myself, but thanks for your concern. No, I'm not doing it for MP3 or stuff like that, it's only because I wanted to see what this IRC is! You know, they're using Channels for Chat rooms and ops for operators and lots of other terms that makes it so confusing to normal chatters and it made me think it might be good to go and see what this IRC is! Curosity killed the cat!

[ghell]

i highly reccomend using mIRC, it is teh standard client application for irc and has greate help files as well as functionality

the best way to learn about irc is to know the very basics and experiment, i think

like if u know what a channel is you can usualy type /chanserv help (or /msg chanserv help) and you learn all about managing channels

i've got an old version of mIRC cos all the new versions i found had timebombs etc on them so im sticking with what i know but i didnt need to turn auto acept off cos it wasnt on to start with anyway