Re asking questions on IRC

Robert C. Helling helling at atdotde.de
Sat Mar 8 01:54:01 PST 2014


Hi,

just my $.02 on how you effectively communicate on IRC.

Unless you really really want a personal synchronous conversation with one specific person, “XXX are you there?” is probably not the question you want to ask. If you need help as you are stuck with some problem, it is often enough to just ask that question on IRC like e.g. “I keep getting this error message xyz, what am I doing wrong? I already tried a b and c.”. Then anybody with knowledge of that question will help you not the one person you asked for.

The other point is that rather than “are you there” you might want to directly ask your question or if you want to start a conversation make your initial statement. Then even if the person you want to talk to is not watching IRC at that moment he/she will see what you wrote and answer when they are back. Several people here (at least Dirk and me but probably others) use Quassel so they can an will read through what happened while they were away and answer then.

I for example was on vacation the last week meaning not constantly staring at a computer screen even through normal working hours. But I was checking in on IRC every few hours, but possibly on my phone with limited typing capabilities. Then seeing “atdotde, are you there” asked 60 minutes ago I would say nothing rather than “no”. If there would have been a specific question to me I might have answered it but stating my status of presence wouldn’t have made sense. Even answering “now, yes” wouldn’t have helped because I would most probably have been offline again at the time you would have answered yourself. So you had just missed that window of time I had given IRC while putting my kids (which I was taking care of the previous days) on hold. So, please ask your question directly or start a dialogue (which would then happen asynchronously, but it would happen).

Best
Robert

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Robert C. Helling     Elite Master Course Theoretical and Mathematical Physics  
                      Scientific Coordinator                                   
                      Ludwig Maximilians Universitaet Muenchen, Dept. Physik    
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