Ever wondered what operators do? Try reading the "So you want to be an operator?" document.
Welcome to the new look IRCnet.org pages. There aren't many changes to the overall content but the navigation is hopefully a lot better now and some new features, such as the ability to receive email, have been added. The links to everything mentioned here are also at the top of this page. To return to this start page at any time, just click on the central logo.
IRCnet is a huge chat network made up of servers all over the world. If you are a new user then take a look at the Getting Started section and also, take a few minutes first to read the Online Safety section.
It is the oldest of the IRC networks, there is some historical information in the User Information section if you want to know more detail. It is an "anarchistic" network without the channel services and nickname services you may find on other networks but this is deliberate since this is how IRC was designed to be used and our users tend to prefer it this way. This site somewhat reflects the originalphilosophy in that we don't aim to overload you with information and there should be just about enough here to keep most people happy. There are links to plenty of other places if you wish to delve deeper though.
These pages are not run by a bunch of IRCnet operators to dictate how things will be, we need contributions from people who actually use the network to chat. If you have any good ideas, please find us online or send an email and if you have a channel homepage for your IRCnet channel, then please read the Channel Pages and send us a link so that we can add it. If you don't have a Channel homepage, why not get your users to register with ii2.org and then we can link the channel on that.
There is some confusion about which the "Official IRCnet page" is. The answer is simple, there isn't one. To have an official page would imply that one group of people were in control of IRCnet and this isn't the case so in reflection of this there are a few pages out there that represent IRCnet. IRCnet.org (this page) is maintained by the original IRC operators and is aimed more towards linking up various user pages in a simple and easy to use way, whereas IRCnet.com is shiny and corporate looking and concentrates more on the actual network.
Good luck, and have fun.