How to ping someone on IRC

irc

I've been asked to "ping someone on IRC", but I'm not sure what it means.

First, do I need to know the IRC server and channel to ping someone? Is "pinging" so sort of private conversation?

Best Answer

The person probably meant that you should start a conversation with someone. You need to know the network (or at least one server of the network) and someone's nick name to do that. Once you have connected to the server (network) where someone has been sighted, you can send them a message with: 

/msg nickname hello, I was told to ping you.

Not everyone enjoys private conversations on IRC, so it's considered good etiquette to ask the person if it's ok to send them a PM (personal message). You would have to know at least one channel where the person hangs out to do that.

Apart from that you could always /whois nickname to get their host and ping that, although given the context I doubt that's what they meant.

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