(this is Greg's outline for IRC docs for SIPB)

What is IRC?

IRC stands for "Internet Relay Chat", and at it's most basic, is a way
for people anywhere on the Internet to chat in realtime with many
others.  If you just want to use it that way, read the section on
"User's View".  More technical details on the guts of IRC can be found
in the sections on "Operator's View"  and "Administrator's View".

USER'S VIEW

The user needs to get a copy of a program that allows him to talk to
the network (the "client") into a place where he can run it.  On
athena, this can be done most simply by the command "add games".

Once on 

now, explain about channels, and how you can be on several ones

thoughts:  - quick tour of useful commands.

irc [nick] 
IRCNAME

/msg
/join
/part
/privmsg
/whois
/who
/list
/bye

channels - modes, channel operators

what is the "H/G" and "*"?


OPERATOR VIEW

IRC is composed of a net of servers that handle routing messages
between clients (users) in a way that attempts to minimize network
traffic.  Each server connects to one or more other servers in an
acyclic fashion.  In theory, the servers should be set up by their
administrators in such a way that they will all connect in an
efficient manner.  Unfortunately, this theory often has very little to
do with reality, so an operator's primary responsability these days is
to keep an eye on how the links are, and to fix them if they are too
bad.  Their secondary responsibility is to get rid of "ghosts",
clients which have been disconnected from the people at the other end.
An additional task that operators have is sometimes to be a general
consultant on matters of interest to the users, because of the command
/wallops, which writes to all operators logged on at the moment.
(Sort of like zwrite -i help.)  There is no requirement to answer
these questions, but it is often helpful.


tell how to get an O: line

how to assert oper

describe wallops - what they look like

explain about netsplits, and how to fix them - /conn foo 6667 bar

give example of "bad" routing, and how to tell what routing
looks like - /kill paths, and /trace

describe how to figure out what better routing would be - /stats c

how to fix bad routing  - /quote squit and /conn foo 6667 bar 

how to /kill, and when it is reasonable to do it.

ADMINISTRATOR'S VIEW

Admin is responsible for setting up and upgrading server, and choosing
operators, and interfacing with the other administrators.

how to rebuild a server including where to get the source

how to configure one - I lines, O lines, C/N lines, K lines, maybe Q
lines, if I can ever figure out classes explain them

how to start a server

how to stop a server