General Channel Guidelines

This document describes some general tips to follow when chatting in channels (chatrooms) on DareNET, which will likely assist you, especially if you're new to IRC.

Flooding

Flooding is nearly always considered highly disruptive and inappropriate in IRC channels. This includes messaging a channel an excessive amount of lines within a short interval of time. Many channels have ops with scripts or bots that enforce a flooding rule (number of lines per number of seconds which are allowed) which often ban users who flood the channel.

It is, however, important to note that all channels have different rules set for flooding. To stay on the safe side try and stay away from messaging more than 3-5 lines in 10 seconds. A tip which may help you avoid being banned for flooding would be to try and type more text per line, rather than lots of seperate lines. Too many characters in a single line can also get you banned for flooding - a good rule of thumb would be to stay under 350 characters per line.

Repeating

The good thing about IRC is that it's text and not hearing based. People aren't blind, they see what you are saying and repeating yourself over and over won't help. However it may and will annoy people. If you have a question or a statement, state it once - there is no need to repeat - sooner or later someone will reply to you. As with flooding, most channels will probably ban for repeat. A good guideline would be to limit the same line being repeated within a few minutes period; people do need time to type, after all.

Op Begging

You should NEVER ask to be opped in a channel. It will nearly always result in being kicked/banned and damage future chances to become an op in that channel. If you abide by the channel guidelines and are active in the channel, you will most likely become an op eventually. This is not to say that there are any standards for getting opped, each channel has it's own procedures for giving ops, which can range from whimsy to democracy.