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Internet Relay Chat
The worldwide IRC networks offer a virtual meeting place where people from all over the world can meet and talk. Don't confuse IRC with Instant Messenger services or the slow Web chats you might have seen. IRC is specially designed for chatting and works very fast.
IRC was originally written by Jarkko Oikarinen in 1988. Since starting in Finland, it has spread to almost all countries around the world. IRC is a multi-user chat system, where people meet on "channels" (rooms, virtual places, usually with a certain topic of conversation) to talk in groups, or privately. There is no restriction to the number of people that can participate in a given discussion, or the number of channels that can be formed on IRC.
Safety on the Internet
One thing about the Internet is that you never really know for sure who is sitting at that other computer. Someone who seems like a 12 year old girl might be a 40 year old man.
Do not give out any personal information such as your name, phone numbers, email addresses, home address or school.
Guidelines and Rules for use of the Scoutlink chat servers can be found in the Rules for JOTI. You can read more about the dangers of chat and how to be safe online at www.chatdanger.com.
Welcome to mIRC
mIRC is an IRC program for Windows. Just like you need a Web browser to surf over the Web you need an IRC client to chat on IRC.
mIRC attempts to provide a user-friendly interface for use with the IRC networks. As a user you run mIRC on your PC and you connect to a "server" in an IRC network. All servers are interconnected and pass messages from user to user over the IRC network. One server can be connected to several other servers and up to hundreds of clients.
You can join several channels at once and participate in private discussions at the same time. The various parts of the mIRC client have been designed with the aim of simplifying and speeding up your IRC sessions.
mIRC is supported by a set of Web pages. On these pages you'll find information on new versions, new ideas, known bugs and solutions, and possibly all other information you might need on IRC in general, and on mIRC. Besides the newest mIRC, there is also the new mIRC FAQ and IRC Intro file are available from the mIRC website.