User:Hjiang/stage1.4IntroToIRC

Answer the following questions about IRC:

1. How do people interact? People interact with each other using text messages.

2. What is the pattern of communication? Is it linear or branched? Formal or informal? One-to-many, one-to-one or a mix? A chair leads the discussion, sets up a topic, and others participate and share their thoughts about the topic. The chair controls the time, and guides the discussion to different topics. It's linear, informal, one-to-many. Anyway people can also specifically address to someone by mentioning the user ID.

3. Are there any terms that seem to have special meaning? Yes. For example: #info #idea #link #topic, etc.

4. Can you make any other observations? I use Colloquy on Mac. It's interesting that the IRC meetbot uses different colors to make the text messages easier to read. And the commands #action #agreed #halp #info #idea #link #topic really help to highlight something.