IRC

The IRC, or Internet Relay Chat, is a popular form of communication beyond  SMW Central. Users from the website and possibly other people from different websites join a single channel and talk to each other in one large conversation.

Rules
The rules of the website still apply in #smwc, no flaming, trolling and so on. A full list of rules can be found  here.

Connecting
To connect to the IRC, you will need to download an IRC client, or you can use the   web chat. The most popular clients are as follows: XChat, although originally created for users running on Linux systems, has become a popular IRC client. You can customize it as much as you can like other popular clients such as mIRC. If you want to use scripts however, you will need to download the programming language Perl onto your computer.
 * XChat

This is a free, unofficial build of XChat named XChat-WDK. The official build costs money on all OSes but Linux. You can get it here. mIRC is one of the most popular clients that many members use. It has script support without the need of external programs or any downloads and it's not a complex client. Most users recommend this as an IRC client. Not the best IRC client, but convenient for members that use the browser Firefox. To use the client you must open it from Tools. It has no script support and is very limited in terms of customization and such. This is an IRC client for Mac OS X. Recommended for all Mac users who want to connect to the IRC. It can be customized in a lot of ways. There is also a version available for iOS, but beware that it isn't free. Not as popular as the above clients, but works as a command prompt (cmd.exe) window IRC client. It's avaliable for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. It also has the ability to run Python scripts and some IRC Bots are connected through this method. There are also various themes you can get for it to customise your usage of Irssi.
 * mIRC
 * ChatZilla
 * Colloquy
 * Irssi

See Wikipedia's Comparison of Internet Relay Chat clients for more detailed information on the strengths and weaknesses of each IRC client.

Channels
Main article: IRC Channels

General Commands and Tips
<p style="line-height:19.0499992370605px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:12.6999998092651px;">When on a server or channel, you can use a variety of commands. Commands are executed by typing out a forward slash (/) followed by the command. Here is a list of basic commands to get you started:

SERVER
<p style="line-height:19.0499992370605px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:12.6999998092651px;">SERVER

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.0499992370605px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:12.6999998092651px;">Join a server on the IRC.

JOIN
<p style="line-height:19.0499992370605px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:12.6999998092651px;">JOIN

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.0499992370605px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:12.6999998092651px;">Join a channel on a connected server. Some channes may require passwords to access, in which case must be typed out as:

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.0499992370605px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:12.6999998092651px;">JOIN

ME
<p style="line-height:19.0499992370605px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:12.6999998092651px;">ME

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.0499992370605px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:12.6999998092651px;">Talk in third person.

KICK
<p style="line-height:19.0499992370605px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:12.6999998092651px;">KICK

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.0499992370605px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:12.6999998092651px;">Kicks a user from a channel. They must manually rejoin the channel unless they have automatic rejoin enabled with their client. Some servers have +J enabled, meaning that after a kick you can set a timespan of how long a user must wait to join the channel after being kicked.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.0499992370605px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:12.6999998092651px;">MODE +J

NICKSERV
<p style="line-height:19.0499992370605px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:12.6999998092651px;">NS HELP

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.0499992370605px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:12.6999998092651px;">Type out the previous command to view all possible uses of the NICKSERV command. Nickserv is mainly used to register and group seperate nicknames, as such: NS REGISTER NS GROUP

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.0499992370605px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:12.6999998092651px;">Make sure when registering a nick, you are currently under the nickname you want to register. Same for grouping a nickname. Change to the nickname you would like to join with your original registered nickname before typing out the command.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.0499992370605px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:12.6999998092651px;">To identify yourself after registering, type out:

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.0499992370605px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:12.6999998092651px;">NS IDENTIFY

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.0499992370605px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:12.6999998092651px;">The advantage of registering a nick is that you can GHOST people who use your nickname, meaning you can disconnect them so you can change to it.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.0499992370605px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:12.6999998092651px;">NS GHOST

CHANSERV
<p style="line-height:19.0499992370605px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:12.6999998092651px;">CS HELP

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.0499992370605px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:12.6999998092651px;">View all possible commands that can be used with CHANSERV. There is a very wide range you can use.

MODE
<p style="line-height:19.0499992370605px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:12.6999998092651px;">MODE

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.0499992370605px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:12.6999998092651px;">Modes are one of the most useful commands on the IRC. There is a large variety of modes that can be used on the IRC, whether it be for banned users, setting channel modes to stop colours, to mute the channel and so on. Here's a short list of commands you can use:

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.0499992370605px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:12.6999998092651px;"> NOTE: + enables a mode, - disables a mode.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.0499992370605px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:12.6999998092651px;"> Banning: +/-b

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.0499992370605px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:12.6999998092651px;">Muting a channel (everyone but those with power): +/-m

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.0499992370605px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:12.6999998092651px;">Disable kicking: +/-Q

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.0499992370605px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:12.6999998092651px;">Adding a Password/Key to a Channel: +/-k

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.0499992370605px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:12.6999998092651px;">Making the Channel Secret: +/-s

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.0499992370605px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:12.6999998092651px;"> This is just a short list. A full list can be found here and here. (CaffieNET uses the Unreal IRCd.)