Using freenode

Welcome!

Right about now, you're using freenode for the first time, and someone has told you that you should go to the introduction page to find out what it's all about. Maybe you've used Internet Relay Chat for several years, and you have a whole set of expectations of what IRC is supposed to be like—if so, you're probably a bit confused! We'll try to help you get it sorted out.

"What's a Free Node?"

Everyone knows what freenode is, and they'll be happy to tell you. It's that open source chat network, it's a place where bloggers and Wikipedia people go to talk, it's that place where fedora or gentoo or debian people hang out. It's a programmers' network, or maybe it's the home of a lot of free software projects.

But freenode is very different from what you'd expect.

freenode is a Meta-Community

Most IRC networks are destinations, places where people go. freenode is a crossroads. Hundreds of groups and projects use the network as a discussion medium. Each group is organized in its own way to achieve its own purposes, and all of the groups meet on freenode to interact. On traditional IRC networks, a channel exists apart from the outside world. On freenode, a channel is an expression of the outside world.

freenode is a social networking project that spans communities.

freenode is a Way to Think About Community

Traditional IRC networks consist of individual channels without a common purpose or agenda. Service is provided by loose associations of autonomous server owners, who typically confine their activities to setting server affiliation policy, administering servers and controlling large-scale server abuse such as clonebot flooding.

freenode was created to encourage scalable communities around groups which produce tangible, broadly-licensed creative output. Current groups produce Free and Open Source Software, software standards and web content, as well as reference material on a variety of subjects. In addition to serving such groups, the network provides services to not-for-profit entities and to groups associated with web media and blogging.

We have an agenda: we believe that communities work better (and scale better) when their members try hard to keep their communities friendly and courteous. The environment of freenode is designed to help that happen. If you've just arrived, please take a look at the freenode philosophy page, the channel guidelines, the policy page and the FAQs. We depend on you to make the network a better place. The links above will help you learn how.

If you've used IRC in the past and find our way of doing things to be non-intuitive or problematic, please take a look here.

Welcome to freenode!