IRC is a popular communications medium for software developers and other highly technical users, and as such, there are a variety of channels available.
You will be talking, in almost every case to people who volunteer their time. Often the people helping you will be developers or other highly technical users. Their time is at a premium, and they are rarely, if ever under any obligation to help you. "Helpers", be they channel ops, developers, or simply other knowledgeable users, are willing to share their knowledge, and work hand in hand to answer questions and solve problems.
However, time and energy are scarce resources. There are two kinds of laziness in the technical world - the kind that leads people to build things to solve problems, which is highly admired, and the kind that expects everyone else to do all the work for them, which is highly despised.
Always do your own "homework". This can't be stated enough. If you ask questions to which the answers are trivially found, you will be looked down upon. Even if you get answers, your social standing within that group will decline, and help may be harder to come by in the future.
Before you ask the net gods, irc gurus, and developers for help, you should make a good faith effort to find the answer yourself.
This means that you should have at the very least taken 5 minutes to do a Google search and skim over any related documentation.
(And by the way, if your question really is about homework, be honest about it, rather than try to trick people into doing your homework - while nobody will do it for you, you might find someone to help you get "unstuck")
Your basic searches for answers should include.
- Your question (and close variants thereof - sometimes Google is dumb, and a synonym has more relavent search results.
- Keywords related to the problem and product )foo freezes bar) both with and without specifics (foo freezes bar on baz motherboard). Again, try a couple of variants.
- Search for product and "known issues" - if the problem is widespread, it might already be known and documented.
Note any interesting, relevant keywords that might relate to your problem, or that seem to mention your problem without giving a solution, and try to plug these terms in to a second round of searching.
If your question is about IRC itself, most networks have an #irchelp, #help, or #networkname channel, or a pointer in the topic of one of those channels to where you can find help.
If your question is a general computer question, the more generic #help on most networks may be a starting place, or there may be a channel for your operating system
Believe it or not, it's seen as imposing, if not rude, just like those "friends" that ask "Can you do me a favor?" before they even tell you what that favor is. Rather, skip the unpleasant pleasantries, and just ask your question in as clear and concise of a manner as possible.
A statement like "It doesn"t work" is absolutely useless to someone trying to help you. It gives absolutely no context - it doesn't tell anyone the important details of WHAT doesn't work, and HOW it's not working. It's not enough to help you, so most users will just ignore you.
Examples of things that can be useful to give context:
- What version of the software is your question about
- When did the problem start?
- What operating system are you using?
- What steps have you tried already?
Most channels do not like long pastes or walls of text. If it takes more than 2-3 average (screen width) lines of text to describe you issue and lay out supporting information, give a short summary, and put the full details in a "pastebin".
While you may be singularly focused on IRC and getting an answer to your questions, chances are the people you are asking for help are not. The people in the channel will be tabbed out into other applications, maybe even working on fixing bugs in the very application you have a question about. People in help channels check the window periodically to see what's going on, so sooner or later someone will see your question - it's not unreasonable to wait as long an hour on quieter channels, and longer is not unheard of if people are concentrated in one time zone.
If other people are getting help, and you aren't getting any replies, it's possible you are being ignored, and it's also possible that the person who can answer your question hasn't seen it quite yet.
In particularly if the question is too obvious or too vague, you may get no response at all. Take the time to reflect on your question and how it can be improved. If it seems obvious, but you can't find the answer with basic Google searches, try asking about how you should have searched for it - for example "I'm having foo do bar on baz when it should be doing quux, I tried to search for "foo bar" and "foo bar baz" and "foo quux" but none of the results really seemed to related to bar at all. I'm at a loss, am I missing something here or is there something else I should have looked for?
These acronyms mean you've missed the obvious, and are telling you either to read the ... fine manual or read the ... fine web. (or another four letter word of choice) . The person telling you to do so almost always has said manual or search result in front of them, or have seen the question so often that they can see the place where it's documented burned onto the inside of their eyeballs, They are trying to teach you that you really aren't helpless. Take the hint, go back over the document you missed, give a simple apology for wasting everyone's time, and move on. It may sound a bit rude, but hay, at least they didn't ignore you.
IRC has its own culture and its own set of courtesies. The nature of IRC lends to a style of communication that varies even during a single conversion from highly asynchronous, with delays of hours or days such as might be expected for email, to concurrent, as would be expected on a conference call. While this may be jarring to those not accustomed to it, this attribute makes IRC an ideal medium for collaboration.
Some major differences to remember:
- ALL CAPS is jarring, and visually distracting. As a VERY STRONG form of emphasis, it's considered the same as SHOUTING.
- Efficient communication is highly prized. Wasting someone's time will not make friends.
- While courtesy is appreciated, certain courtesies, as noted earlier, are not seen as courtesies on IRC.
- Don't private message users without a good reason to do so. Having a question is not good reason, as it's best asked in the channel where everyone can see it. While you don't quite need an invitation to PM someone, if you do it without good reason, expect them to get angry. Similarly, don't ask for permission to PM without some explanation.