Survival Guide : IRC | Hacker News Reader

Survival Guide : IRC

mahdiyusuf.com

91 pointsmyusuf339 comments

  A little note for you Experts out there. Don’t take 
  yourself too seriously; We are all here to learn and 
  grow. Coddle the dumb ones and challenge the smart ones.

If you consider the ratio of expertise to ignorant questions you'll see that this is really bad advice. Experts, even when they dabble in Q&A, are not by definition tutors. It's unfair to expect that whole category of people to waste their own time and the time of people with smart questions by 'coddling' those who fail to grasp this fact. When dealing with people who are clearly overreaching their current capabilities, or who ask 'how' questions without any interest in the 'why', giving them the cold shoulder and an invitation to gather more background knowledge from published resources is often the best service that can be done.

Another factor in support fatigue among open source software experts is the (often inept) commercial application of the software, which is commonly associated with a lack of respect for the software itself and for those who have deep knowledge of it. Then* you get questions paired with criticism like 'I know exactly how to do this in Y, why can't stupid X behave the way I want?' or insistent pleading like 'I need to get this working ASAP! Please halp!'. When the intent behind the question is not to learn but to make money faster, volunteers support 'staff' are not obliged to step up.

Anyway, advising experts in general to change the way they volunteer time and information is pointless. They know what works for them and there are no levers on IRC to make them change their habits.

PS, config help on #apache? What network is that? :)

* I know, not only then.

"Protip: Learn to laugh it off. Another thing when you decide to be a bitchass; add a smiley. Trust me it makes all the difference. "

I grew skeptical of the advice at this point. Putting a 'smiley' after an unpleasant statement is the equivalent of saying it with a snide smirk on your face.

it just goes to show that your not trying to be malicious in your somewhat harsh statement. Sometimes there is no way to put something delicately to a complete stranger. adding the smiley is more of a way to get the reader to look at it as constructive as supposed to judgement on the person asking the question.

Unfortunately, some people use it to be snide, so its unclear and should be avoided. Some think that adding a 'smiley' is a license to be tactless, blunt or insulting, but it's better to learn how to express ones thoughts properly. 'just sayin' serves the same faulty purpose. If you feel the need to add one of those to avoid being misinterpreted, rewrite your statement. 'not trying to be harsh' or 'please take this as constructive criticism' are more expressive.

(+1) I totally agree, but people tend to be lazy, especially when their goal is to help the person rather than dealing with them as a human being.

Keep in mind that IRC is no exception to the Fuckwad Theory:

    Normal person + Anonymity + Audience = Total Fuckwad

I'd go so far as to say it was one of the earliest examples.

Here's a link to the actual comic: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/

Come to #haskell sometime :)

This is a great, IRC-specific extension to esr's "How To Ask Questions the Smart Way" ( http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html ). Reading (and understanding) both of these documents as an IRC newbie will most likely make your experience much more pleasant.

That was my goal. glad you enjoyed it.

I personally loath meta answers like "why are you doing X and asking Y" instead of wasting the equivalent typing of explaining why X and Y is a bad idea.

With that said, I usually find the most serious experts just quietly ignoring silly questions or trying to pry out the root of the problem through a constructive dialog. Why superior douchebags get satisfaction of showing of their superiority by bashing beginners has always been beyond me.

That said you really need a tough skin on IRC on some channels, and always take the topic to the letter. That usually indicates what type of people hang there and what type of messages are accepted.

> I personally loath meta answers like "why are you doing X and asking Y" instead of wasting the equivalent typing of explaining why X and Y is a bad idea.

That's funny; I'm more often annoyed by the second response because often X and Y are only generally bad, not universally bad. Even though the supportee should probably have an up-front justification, it's reasonable to check for one and avoid handing out an unfair critique.

The point is being up front and to the point, in spirit with "don't ask to ask, just ask". Most of these meta-answers are founded in the belief that the asker doesn't know what they are asking. And by supplying another set of questions instead of just bluntly stating what you think, you are feebly trying to guard yourself from being wrong - which is something people hate to admit on IRC.

The better being that you explain that "X and Y is a bad idea" and getting a quick "No" in response (assuming the asker knows what he/shes asking), instead of having the asker having to going in to more (often unnecessary) detail.

More people should be referred to this when introduced to IRC. Or really you should just be told this by anyone introducing you.

There is one thing wrong about the article though: irssi is clearly the best client... X-Chat? Are you mad!? :p

Agreed. I've tried many clients over the years and loved bitchX from the old days and now use irssi exclusively. It's great and really easy to learn. Very scriptable as well.

But ... but Mirc is such an amazing tool!!

(please don't hate me, I use xchat and irssi much of the time)

haha looks like I am going to have to try out this irssi.

I'm tempted to write a pilot for a show where the only purpose is to have silly explanations for technical things.

It's already been done, kind of, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCWA7uevo_Q

These are fairly obvious to anyone over the age of 13... (except the first one perhaps)

Be patient, be polite, help out, and don't ask ambiguous questions without enough detail.

An inclusion of where / what servers to go to for help would be more useful. I think most people get lost with that rather than etiquette.

You'd be surprised how many people in there aren't over the age of 13!

I first encountered IRC at the age of 9 or so, when I installed Linux for the first time and randomly opened X-Chat, which took me to Freenode. By the time I was 13, I had engaged in screaming competitions with GNU fundamentalists in #gnu, asked hundreds of stupid questions in ##linux, and provided support to countless others in #pearpc and #distrowatch, and obviously grown a much thicker skin.

I was on IRC before 13; I found the existing IRC guides to be very helpful.

I find that finding which room to go is rather trivial problem. I find dealing with people in irc; would be the main problem when first trying it out and getting to learn the ropes with technical people online. Those things may be fairly obvious but they happen everyday; in every room.

I'll add a few points:

* Read the topic. That includes also any relevant URLs in it.

* Follow the channel for little time before asking anything.

* If you had a problem which was solved, tell how it was solved. This adds to the communal knowledge.

> Follow the channel for little time before asking anything.

Related: an IRC stream is always conversation of sorts and, for humans, there is only enough bandwidth for a few voices at a time to be heard. If three people have just asked questions or there are multiple ongoing discussions, it might be wise to wait until things quiet down a bit.

Guide to #startups on Freenode: don't ask questions, post cat pictures.

Fortunately, not all irc rooms are filled with douches.

Of course, you should do your homework and be precise but "the Experts" should take it easy on newcomers.

There's one thing that annoys me that you missed. People who ask for advice, then disregard any advice that is given.

I wish I read this when I first started using irc. I always used to ask to ask...

They should have simply let NUMB3RS explain IRC.

>If you want to piss off the most knowledgeable person in the room; simply ask if you can ask a question.

Don't forget the corollary: Never ask if you can ask a question on channels where they don't like answering questions. You should know that its not a channel for asking questions. If you are brazen enough to ask a question expect the following answer:

    <a> How do I XY my Z?
    <@b> !google XY a Z
    <bot> http://lmgtfy.com/?q=XY+a+Z

Well, the point is you need to try to figure it out for yourself before you ask someone else directly for their attention. If someone simply points you to google, you should be able to tell them why that isn't an acceptable response to your question.

    <a> That won't help my XY is W and V. What can I do?
    *b has changed the channel topic to: Don't ask questions.

In my experience, whenever someone has proven to have sufficiently searched out for an answer themselves, this doesn't come up.

That said, my primary experience in help rooms is in ##java on freenode.

This is exactly what happens on the official Arch Linux IRC channel. The entire process stinks of condescension and probably drives quite a few people away from the channel (including myself).

What I found was that very few people on the distro channels have original knowledge - they just run some bot commands or link to some page they Googled for. If I ask a question that hasn't been answered before, nobody replies. That's why I usually end up going to the upstream channel instead, where they actually know what they're doing and are willing to help, even if that means you have to wait 12+ hours for a reply.

haha is happens as well, thats why I wrote that note to experts, cultivate a community and try to learn from others.

I thought this was going to be about using IRC to control bot networks or programs in general.

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