Wikipedia:IRC

This help page is a how-to guide. It details processes or procedures of some aspect(s) of Wikipedia's norms and practices. It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, and may reflect varying levels of consensus and vetting.

Shortcut WP:CHAT

This external system is not subject to the WMF Privacy Policy.

Wikimedia IRC has been migrated from freenode to Libera Chat. For more information, please see meta:IRC/Migrating to Libera Chat. References to freenode on this page and others may be out of date.

New to IRC? Please go to the IRC channel to reach our online helpers!

To begin using Wikimedia IRC channels, see: IRC/Tutorial and m:IRC/Instructions. For the related WikiProjects, see:WikiProject IRC and WikiProject IRC collaboration.

The Libera Chat network has "chat rooms" dedicated to Wikipedia 24 hours a day, in which Wikipedians can engage in real-time discussions with each other. Many Wikipedians have chatting open in one window and hop back and forth between it and other windows in which they are working on Wikipedia. The chat rooms most relevant to English Wikipedia are listed hereafter; a more complete list of channels (for other language Wikipedias, other languages, and recent changes feeds) exists at m:IRC/Channels.

"Chat room" is a name for an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel. IRC chat takes place on a network of servers; the network that hosts the Wikimedia channels is known as Libera Chat. To participate in the chat, you need a type of program or plug-in called an IRC client. Popular clients are listed below.

Use and anonymity on IRC are covered in more detail below. Note that IRC needs more care to maintain anonymity than Wikipedia editing does. Anyone can see your IP until you become cloaked, and the process to become cloaked is not immediate.