IRC

IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat. We use it for real-time internet text messaging related to the project.

All the engaged people from the community and the developer team can be found there, and most prolific modders will also be there.

Channels

Join one of the IRC channels on irc.freenode.net. (Click the “webchat” link to start chatting directly in your browser if you don't use an IRC program yet.) The language is English by default.

Open channels

These channels are open for everyone:

Channel	Topic	Logs
#minetest(webchat)	Casual discussion about everything Minetest	[1]
#minetest-dev(webchat)	Core Minetest development discussion (and Minetest Game to some extent). Everything else (including modding) is off-topic. Please stay on topic here! Note: Webchat users can only read here, not talk. Use a client software (see below) to talk	[2]
#minetest-fr(webchat)	General discussion in French	[3]
#minetest-de(webchat)	General discussion in German	[4]
#minetest-es(webchat)	General discussion in Spanish	[5]

Restricted channels

Channel	Topic	Logs
#minetest-hub(webchat)	Self-description: “(…) for people who regularly improve Minetest by developing, modding, hosting servers and otherwise. (…) To request voice, please PM one of the channel ops.”. In this channel, only selected people are allowed to talk (“have voice”), the rest can only read. See also: http://hub.minetest.net/info	[6]

Software

If you like to chat a lot, webchat is not very convenient. So you should download an IRC client program. Here is some recommended free software:

• HexChat: Feeature-rich program for Windows and GNU/Linux (and similar), continuation of now legacy XChat program
• Leafchat: Simple program for Windows, GNU/Linux and Mac OS)
• irssi Pure console client

If you have difficulties in understanding IRC, http://www.irchelp.org/ is a good resource.

Rules

Some people don't know how to behave in IRC, so here are some simple rules:

• Don’t ask if you can ask questions, just ask
• Be patient when you ask something, people might not be around
• Don’t spam
• Don’t flood the channel with messages or bot commands
• Use a pastebin, such as 0bin if you want to post more than 4 lines (e.g. error messages or code)
• Annoying, racist or any form of degrogatory term against any user or channel operator will probably get you quieted or even banned.
• If you’re going to ask someone something, saying "please" goes a very long way.
• The channels are not playgrounds and are frequently used for talks which are not off-topic.
• Off-topic is allowed, but excessive use of it is disallowed.
• Link shorteners are discouraged for URLs that are not very long.