For a long time, slashnet's #everything channel (or "#e") was exactly as burnboy and masukomi's writeups suggest. In the three years since, the chatterbox has largely supplanted #everything as THE place to chat about nodes, noders and noding. Many of #e's regulars are "fled" noders or only very rarely active on e2, and for the active noders #e is often an escape from, rather than an extension of, e2.
To help prevent Internet tragedy and confusion, I'd like to share three observations about the current climate of #e. Failure to observe these conditions will almost certainly subject the unwary to flames, trollery, ridicule, and eventually, kickbanning.
- #e is a clique. Many of #e's regulars have been there for years, and there's quite a network of offline relationships among its users. #e is not an "invite only" channel, but be aware that "being a noder" does not garner you any instant cred, either. It may seem as though new users are unwelcome in #e. If you don't know how to mingle, you won't find it any easier to do so here. If you can't comprehend a channel with no "topic" per se, you should probably go shop somewhere more topic-oriented. If you're insulting, creepy, a "furry", a "lurker", or an "attention whore", don't bother. If you're suspiciously evasive or unwilling to convincingly answer simple questions like "who the fuck are you" or "how did you find our invisible channel", we have chanops to fill in the blanks... with /kicks and /bans.
- This camaraderie is often attended by extremely politically incorrect banter, ranging from the brilliantly witty to the filthiest vulgarity, punctuated and seasoned with every manner of potentially offensive invective. Between regulars, this is usually a macho means of expressing intimacy, but it can also signal heartfelt uncertainty and distrust when directed at new arrivals.
- #e is not the help channel.
In line with this vulgar and capricious cliquishness, #e is frequently militantly anti-helpful. Requests for advice on this or that feature of such-and-such operating system are often met with advice to uninstall and replace with some other operating system. Another beloved response involves upgrading your modem wetware to the latest AOL lunix.
- Being the sort of fellow who loves to show off his knowledge, I used to find this a little difficult to comprehend myself, but I'll venture a hypothesis: we respect an old-school hacker ethic of reading the manual and hands-on experimentation, and resent being treated as a shortcut to skills that should properly come from study and experience.
Fun facts:
If you know your everything2.com history, you know that e2's creators are closely associated with Slashdot, and there's a bit of overlap between Slashdot and E2 celebrities. It should come as no surprise that CowboyNeal founded #e (way back before Everything became Everything2), hence the Slashnet IRC connection.
FAQ (1): "iiiiii, snivel whine, where is the everything2.com IRC channel then? (p.s. mascara is runny)"
Try #catbox. What, that's empty, or nearly so? You might also try #britnoders, or more tangentially, #edev. But yeah, no slashnet IRC channels devoted to everything2.com seem to get much traffic at all these days. Maybe you should start one, you visionary philosopher you, and when you've got all the noders on IRC, then you could write a node about it, and they'd all "upvote" you it.
FAQ (2): "zomg what is /topic if not teh noadx0ringz then?!"
Some channels have clearly-defined "topics". Ironically perhaps, you can often tell more about the general topic of conversation from the channel name than from the channel's /topic attribute.
(Fig. 1: Examples of IRC channels and topics)
#WoW_Leetard Clan Leet of Arduin to fairie dragon boss: "pwnt!!1"
#barelylegalgifs animated gif trading type !wank 4 help
#gothboi into angst and instability for the chicks
Anyway, #e is not a "topical" channel in that way. I guess you could call it a "social" channel. Aside from bursting into jerkcity, achewood, and Shut Up Little Man! references at the drop of a hat, we chat about the common sorts of things people do when they've never even heard of E2: video games, boozes and bonghits, sex, movies, music, kids these days, my stupid boss/roommate/professor/self, and URLs of things that are cute, funny, or just intriguing in their weirdness. (For as often as we mention boobies and cocks, actual porn URL references are minimal.)
E2's origins, evolution, personalities, and contents have been discussed, worshipped, reviled, mourned and satirized TO DEATH in #e. Moreover, E2 is the perfect medium and the authoritative source to reference and discuss itself. The subject of E2 isn't "forbidden" in #e, so much as "stale", "boring", and for some of us perhaps a little "unsalvageably disappointing." This is the closest thing we have to a "forbidden" topic.
That, and furries.