SL4 Chat

The SL4 chat room—#sl4 on the server sl4.org, port 6667—is a place for people interested in SL4 topics to hang out. As a general rule, the chat room is a lot less formal than the mailing list. Friendly chat is not only permitted, but encouraged. Unlike the SL4 mailing list, the #sl4 room is sometimes newbie-friendly. (Sometimes.) However, we make no guarantee that the helpful person answering your questions is an experienced SL4 poster, as opposed to someone who wandered in from a different chatroom and thinks the Singularity is a kind of fish.

The chat is always open and a dozen or more people are always there (usually more). If the channel is empty, you've probably arrived immediately after a network error cleared.

Etiquette

• Although #sl4 doesn't need to stick to SL4 topics as the mailing list does, it is the policy of #sl4 not to have certain kinds of discussions that appear on other IRC channels. In particular, #sl4 does not allow discussion of l33t w4r3z, sex jokes, or other "pack of junior males" behavior.
• Please speak like a civilized human being. L33t sp33k, excessive use of smilies and vapid acronyms, and other forms of degenerate communication will not be met with approval (unless used in tasteful humor). We will, however, do our best to accomodate non-native English speakers.
• If someone brings in a person new to SL4 issues for an introduction, please don't interrupt the conversation with that person unless you have something relevant to say, or unless the newcomer seems to be looking for random friendly chat.
• Don't be offended if you ask a factual question and the answer is "Google". Unlike other IRC channels, we give you enough credit to be able to perform a simple Web search.
• Just start talking. If you keep saying "hi" and no one is responding, it's because "hi" isn't a very interesting topic. If you want to talk about something, start talking about it and see if anyone responds. Most people in #sl4 keep an eye on the channel while they work on other things and will return to chat if they have the time and interest.
• No bots. One need only recall the time google-bot visisted to understand how quickly a bot can destory the channel.
• The #sl4 channel is not logged.  This is a matter of deliberate policy; please do not put logs of #sl4 online! Some individuals may keep private logs and may be willing to share.

Scheduled Chats

The following is a list of upcoming, scheduled SL4 chats. All dates and times are valid for Atlanta, Georgia (aka Singularity Standard Time); go here to see the current time. Note that Atlanta observes daylight savings time, so depending on the date the time is either GMT-0400 or GMT-0500.

For more information about scheduled chats, see the wiki.

Connecting

You may see a message that says "Checking Ident" that persists for around a minute before the chat connection goes through.  This is normal for that machine's IRC server.  (It isn't looking up your credit history or anything.)

Note that sl4.org runs on the same machine as the Extropy Institute and several other organizations, whose chat rooms will also appear if you connect to "sl4.org" as your IRC server. Similarly, the #sl4 chat room will appear if you connect to "extropy.org" as your IRC server. These other organizations and their chat rooms are not affiliated with sl4.org or #sl4. (Although there is considerable overlap between the people who hang out in, for example, #sl4, #extropy, and #immortal.)

You can connect to #sl4 using any IRC client (see a partial list of IRC clients by environment). The following applet should also let you connect to #sl4 directly if you are using a Java-enabled browser: