IRC is a communication medium, Internet Relay Chat, used commonly by people in open source projects, people working on programming languages, and for social or topic-focused chat rooms. You can download an IRC client to use on your computer to connect to IRC.
Freenode is one popular IRC network that hosts many F/LOSS projects and programming language channels. Relevant channels include:
- ##feminist The most active channel, with its own website
- #geekfeminism Not run or moderated by the same people as the blog and wiki, though there are people who hang out in all 3 places.
- #archlinux-women A project for getting women involved in Arch Linux (a lot of men hang out in the channel too)
- #ubuntu-women A project for getting women involved in Ubuntu
Behavior considerations for IRC users
While IRC is quite useful for many people, it has a history of being a particularly difficult or hostile environment for many women, trans people, people of color, and other people from marginalized groups. For many years, women have often used neutral or male-gendered names (nicks) on IRC to avoid harassment or misogynist judgment of their skills and abilities. This is sometimes experienced as a general hostile environment with "frat guy" style chatter using pejorative and/or sexualized language. But it can also be experienced as direct communication such as harassment in public channel or in private messages (25 times more likely for feminine nicks) that are hateful or are from people who try to hit on anyone in the channel who's perceived as female.
If you experience bad behavior on an IRC channel, try messaging a channel moderator or "op" with the /msg command to explain or point out the bad behavior. Some channels have policies against hate speech or specifically against misogyny. For example, the #perl channel's policy on freenode -- and how to fight misogynist speech -- is explained in this post: http://shadow.cat/blog/matt-s-trout/on-being-part-of-the-solution/ Other avenues could go directly to server admins or the server's policies to combat harassment or hate speech. Here is freenode's policy: http://freenode.net/policy.shtml#offtopic
Logs: public vs. private vs. unlogged
Some IRC channels are logged publicly, while others are logged privately by the ops or even not logged officially by anyone (though anyone present can still keep their own log).
Public logging
Logs are publicly viewable on the internet by anyone, and generally findable. The log might be maintained by the channel owner(s), or by another party. Pros:
- Discussion archives may be useful later for reference, e.g. seeing useful answers to historical questions, catching up on past talk
Cons:
- People may feel uncomfortable discussing sensitive issues
- People with newbie questions (e.g. beginner coding questions) may be uncomfortable asking "stupid" questions in a logged channel
Private logging
Access controlled logs are kept for the benefit of channel ops.
Pros:
- Useful to have documentation in case of harassment incidents or inappropriate conduct
- More comfortable to discuss sensitive issues
- More comfortable to ask newbie questions
Cons:
- Non-ops won't have the logs handy to catch up on discussion that they missed
Not officially logged
No official logs are kept. Pros:
- Easy, since it's the default
- More comfortable to discuss sensitive issues
- More comfortable to ask newbie questions
Cons:
- No tracking of harassment incidents or inappropriate conduct
- Doesn't actually stop individuals from using their own loggers