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,→The people in channels
== The people in channels ==
Channels have operators, or ops. These are people who have special administrative powers to kick people out or otherwise run IRC server commands. You can often spot them in your client (for example, in ChatZilla and XChat they will appear with a Green Circle, and in irssi they will have an @ symbol before their nick).
You can find-out more about a particular person by using the /whois command, for example:
/whois don
In ChatZilla, try right-clicking a user, then User Commands > Who is; in XChat, right-click on a user and then hover over their nick.
Many people will appear to be in the channel, but not all of them will actually be watching IRC at that moment. It is normal for people to leave their IRC clients connected forever and never leave. This way they can catch-up on conversations they missed while they were away.
It is normal to join conversations in the middle without being invited (within reason and assuming you know the people talking ).
Often you'll want to say something to a particular person and not the whole channel. This is known alternatively as 'msg' (short for message or messaging), private message or private chat, query, etc. There are a number of ways to do this, the simplest being to use the /query or /msg command:
/query don
<opens a private chat/channel with user don>
==Tools for collaboration==
