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Irc
,→The people in channels
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.
Because of this, people will often check to see if someone is really there before talking to them. By convention, people will use the person's nick and "''ping" '' or "''ping?" instead of saying, "are you there?":
<don> funny_guy: ping
<jim> pong
The person will often respond with '''"pong."''' . People preface text like ping/pong with a person's nick so that their client will alert them to it (often with a beep or pop-up message). This is helpful when there are a lot of people talking at once in a channel. (NOTE: ChatZilla automatically remembers all text that was directed to your nick so you can scan it later. You can see it in the '''moznet''' tab).
It is normal to join conversations in the middle without being invited (within reason and assuming you know the people talking ).
