Chatter FAQ

Here are some questions frequently asked by new chatters.

1. Q: Hello?? Is anybody THERE???
   • A: You might try typing /list to find other channels of interest
2. Q: Where is everybody from?
   • Note: Other chatters may be resisting the urge to say "well, everybody is pretty much from Earth, though some of us I'm not so sure about."
   • A: All over the place. You can often tell where people are from by looking at their hostmasks -- .com, .net, and .org could be anywhere, but two-letter Top-Level Domains (TLDs) are country-specific:

   .aq - Antarctica¹

   .at - Austria

   .au - Australia

   .be - Belgium

   .de - Germany (Deutschland)

   .dk - Denmark

   .nl - The Netherlands (Holland)

   .nz - New Zealand

   .si - Slovenia

   .us - United States

   ¹we currently have no chatters from Antarctica, but there's a first time for everything...

3. Q: How r u? Y doesn't any1 answ3r?
   • A: See Queen of Wands for one answer to this question, and User Friendly (below) for another (if the nag-image comes up first, just wait a minute or so):

   http://www.userfriendly.org/cartoons/archives/04dec/ufng007401.gif

   • Also: using punctuation is often helpful. "no why" is ambiguous, especially if you tend to abbreviate your sentences; "no; why?" makes it clear what you mean.
4. Q: a/s/l?
   • Note: For those who don't know, this stands for "age? sex? location?", i.e. what's your age, are you male or female, and where are you geographically?
   • A: Although there's no harm in asking, you should be aware that some people may not want to give this information to a stranger -- In which case repeating the question will not gain you any friends. If nobody answers it is probably because they don't want to, not because they didn't "hear" you the first time.
5. Q: Why doesn't anyone talk about something INTERESTING???
   • A:
     • First: if you don't like the conversation in this channel, there are many others; maybe you'd find something more interesting in one of them. To see a list of other channels, type this:

       /list

     • Second: if we had anything interesting to talk about, we'd probably be doing it. Maybe we will later on.

Or maybe you have something interesting you'd like to discuss; try starting the conversation, and don't be surprised if nothing happens for quite awhile. A lot of people who appear to be logged in to a channel aren't actually at their computer -- but they will come back later, and see what has happened while they were away. If your comment interests someone, they may reply. On the other hand, there's usually someone there... and if you are interesting enough, and non-threatening enough (as in not threatening to turn into an impetuous attention-ho), you might get a response sooner.