IRC/Channels
#connect Several IRC channels are available for general or specific discussions. Please note that some of these have a policy that channel logs must not be published.
Besides the discussion channels there are live Recent changes channels for some projects. These channels are hosted on the irc.wikimedia.org server rather than freenode. A number of helpful bots shows the edits on the wiki, one by one automatically as they happen. The displayed URLs give the cumulative differences produced by the edit concerned and any subsequent edits; The time is not listed but timestamping may be provided by your IRC-client. Confirmation that an edit has been processed is typically faster through IRC than through the browser.
Project channels
These channels exist for the community of a particular project, and may host both general and specific discussion.
Wikimedia Foundation
| Channel | Language | Logging[1] | Character set | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #wikimedia | Any | No[2] | UTF-8 | Wikimedia Foundation issues. |
| Language-specific channels | ||||
| #wikimedia-be | nl, de, fr, en | No[2] | UTF-8 | Wikimedia Belgium to be established |
| #wikimedia-de | Any | No[2] | UTF-8 | Wikimedia Deutschland |
| #wikimedia-fr | Any | UTF-8 | Wikimédia France | |
| #wikimedia-nl | No[2] | UTF-8 | Wikimedia Nederland to be established | |
| #wikimedia-uk | No[2] | UTF-8 | Wikimedia UK to be established | |
Wikipedia
These channels are for general discussion about Wikipedia.
| Channel | Language | Logging[1] | Character set | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #wikipedia | Any. | No | UTF-8 | Main channel, heavily populated, can get off-topic. |
| #wikipedia-bootcamp | No | Help channel for new Wikipedians. | ||
| Language-specific channels | ||||
| #als.wikipedia | Alemannisch | only if necessary | UTF-8 | Alemannic |
| #ar.wikipedia | العربية | Arabic | ||
| #wikipedia-balkan | Balkan | Yes | UTF-8/ASCII | Balkan |
| #bg.wikipedia | Български | Bulgarian | ||
| #wikipedia-ca | Català | No | UTF-8 | Catalan |
| #wikipedia-cs | Česky | no | UTF-8 | Czech |
| #wikipedia-da | Dansk | Dansk | ||
| #wikipedia-de | Deutsch | sometimes | UTF-8 | German |
| #wikipedia-en | English | No | UTF-8 | English |
| #wikipedia-es | Español | No | UTF-8 | Spanish |
| #wikipedia-fi | Suomi | No | ISO-8859-1 and -15 | Finnish |
| #wikipedia-fr | Français | No | UTF-8 | French |
| #hi.wikipedia | हिन्दी | Hindi | ||
| #is.wikipedia | Íslenska | No | UTF-8 | Icelandic |
| #wikipedia-it | Italiano | No | UTF-8 | Italian |
| #wikipedia-ja | 日本語 | No | ISO-2022-JP | Japanese |
| #wikipedia-ko | 한국어 | Yes | UTF-8 | Korean (also #wikipedia on HanIRC) |
| #wikipedia-nl | Nederlands | No[2] | Dutch | |
| #nordic.wikipedia | Danish, Faroese, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish | Pending | Common channel for da, fi, fo, is, nb, nn, no, sv (And other scandinavians) See also WIKIng | |
| #wikipedia-no | Norsk | |||
| #wikipedia-pl | Polski | No | UTF-8 | WWW gate |
| #pt.wikipedia | Português | UTF-8, latin2 (unofficial) | ||
| #ro.wikipedia | Română | |||
| #wikipedia-ru | Русский | UTF-8 | ||
| #simple.wikipedia | ||||
| #sk.wikipedia | Slovensky | No | UTF-8 | Just founded! :) |
| #slavopedia | English, Slovio | No | UTF-8 | For the Slavopedia portal and Slovio artificial language (www gate) |
| #sq.wikipedia | Shqip | No | UTF-8 | Very low traffic, mostly empty |
| #wikipedia-sr | српски/srpski (Serbian) |
will be | UTF-8 and ASCII | Intend to be the channel for on-line meetings of people from Serbian Wikipedia. |
| #wikipedia-sv | Svenska | UTF-8 | ||
| #wikipedia-tr | Türkçe | Yes | UTF-8 and ASCII | |
| #vi.wikipedia | Tiếng Việt - English - French | No | ||
| #zh.wikipedia | 中文 | No | UTF-8 | Chinese wikipedia discussions |
Smaller projects
| Channel | Language | Logging[1] | Character set | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #wikinews | Any | No | International Wikinews discussion and story coordination. See Wikinews/IRC for an overview of regulars and their respective locations. | |
| #wikiquote | Any | No | UTF-8 | Wikiquote discussion |
| #wikimedia-commons | Any | No | UTF-8 | Wikimedia Commons discussion. |
| #wiktionary | Any | UTF-8 | Wiktionary discussions | |
| #wikibooks | Any | No | UTF-8 | Wikibooks discussion |
| Language-specific channels | ||||
| #de.wikinews | Deutsch | German Wikinews discussion. | ||
| #wikiquote-ja | 日本語 | No | ISO-2022-JP | |
| #wikinews-ja | 日本語 | No | ISO-2022-JP | |
| #kannada | ಕನ್ನಡ | No | UTF-8 | |
| #Wiki (alkar.net) | Українська | Ні | CP1251 | |
| #wikinews-en | English | No[2] | ??? | English wikinews |
| #wikinews-pl | Polish | Polish wikinews | ||
| #wikislownik | Polish | UTF-8 | Polish Wiktionary (Wikisłownik) | |
| #wiktionary-fr | French | No | UTF-8 | French wiktionary discussions |
Specific channels
Various
| Channel | Language | Logging[1] | Character set | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #wikimedia-stewards | Any | No[2] | UTF-8 | Requests for Stewards and discussions of steward matters. |
| #wikimania | Any | No | UTF-8 | Wikimania discussions |
| #quarto | Any | No | UTF-8 | Foundation newsletter, Wikimedia Quarto issues |
| #mediawiki | Yes[3] | Discussion of the MediaWiki software | ||
| #mediawiki-dev | MediaWiki development | |||
| #wikimedia-tech | Discussion of the Wikimedia servers | |||
| #wikipedia-mediation | to assist with the mediation process (This channel has a Confidentiality policy) | |||
| #AMA.Wikipedia | Discussions with the Association of Members' Advocates | |||
| #wiki | A channel about wikis in general |
Recent changes channels
All of the recentchanges channels are served on irc://irc.wikimedia.org/ and channels named #projectname such as #en.wikipedia or #fr.wikiquote. There are about 500 RC channels on irc.wikimedia.org. Some of them are listed below.
| Channel | Language | Logging[1] | Character set | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #en.wikipedia | ISO-8859-1 | |||
| #en.wikinews | ISO-8859-1 | |||
| #en.wikibooks | ISO-8859-1 | |||
| #als.wikipedia | UTF-8 | |||
| #de.wikipedia | UTF-8 | |||
| #fi.wikipedia | UTF-8 | Most people use #wikipedia-fi/rc at irc.freenode.net, which has a different style, some additional features and is in ISO-8859-15 encoding. | ||
| #fr.wikipedia | UTF-8 | |||
| #ja.wikipedia | UTF-8 | |||
| #meta.wikimedia | UTF-8 | |||
| #pl.wikipedia | UTF-8 | |||
| #ru.wikipedia | UTF-8 | |||
| #commons.wikimedia | UTF-8 | |||
| #en.wikisource | UTF-8 | |||
Logging prohibition on #wikipedia and other channels
You might be able to log #wikipedia and #wikimedia privately (check with local laws), but you must not indiscriminately publish full channel logs on the web. This includes publicly viewable "tail" logs, where only recent talk is shown. If it is related to a discussion elsewhere, you may quote small sections of the channel log. If you wish to do this, you should delete any lines which are not related to the topic in question. You should also seek permission from the participants in the discussion before publishing their words. According to a popular channel topic, publishing logs is punishable by Crushing by elephant. Banning is probably a more likely result. This also applies in several of the other channels as listed above.