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The page also serves as a listing of IRC channels that are frequently used, with descriptions of their general purpose. There are also instructions for the non-technical folks on how they can join an IRC chat.

==Getting Started ==

IRC stands for "Internet Relay Chat". It's a protocol for real-time chat sessions. (Read more [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irc about IRC on Wikipedia].) It was invented before the World Wide Web, so it was adopted by early open source contributors and Web developers, and it has been used by those communities ever since. Like email, no single company controls IRC. IRC servers are offered by many individuals and organizations. Users log in to a particular server to chat with other users on that server, using a client program designed for IRC; just as there are many programs for reading email, there are many different IRC client programs. Chat discussions take place in "channels," which have names starting with a '#' symbol.