Contents

• Description
• Rules
  • Do not paste.
  • Do not ask CGI questions.
  • Do not use color or special markup.
  • Do not send automatic noise messages.
• Bots
  • lzhh - real person
  • workbench - experimental bot

Description (top)

Undernet #Perl is a general help channel; new and intermediate programmers alike are welcome to ask questions. The channel is often very quiet, but if you ask your question it's likely someone will be around to answer it.

Rules (top)

There are a few rules to follow, but it's not really onerous. There is an automated temporary kickban in place that enforces the no CGI rule, based on keywords. Be careful of what you say.

• Do not paste.
• Do not ask CGI questions.
• Do not use color or special markup.
• Do not send automatic noise messages.
  
  

• Do not paste. (top, rules)

  Do not paste large amounts of text to channel. This should be a common-sense rule, and a matter of normal IRC etiquette. The rule is designed primarily to prevent channel flooding. There are quite often paste bots around that you can use to show your code. This rule is also here to allow the people helping you to easily refer back to the text in question without having to scroll back and forth in the IRC window.

  
  

• Do not ask CGI questions. (top, rules)

  You are not allowed to ask questions relating to CGI, the common gateway interface. This also means you are not allowed to ask questions tangentially related to CGI, such as questions about FastCGI, mod_perl, etc.

  
  

• Do not use color or special markup. (top, rules)

  Some IRC clients, most notably those available for Windows, allow you to markup your text so that it looks different; this can include adding color, bold, underlines, and overstrikes. Do not use these features. Not everyone will be using the same IRC client you're using, and therefore may see random garbage in what you say. Others may be using clients that fully understand the markup your client is using, but do not appreciate having what they consider unimportant text highlighted for them.

  
  

• Do not send automatic noise messages. (top, rules)

  This includes automatic away or back messages, messages indicating what song you're currently listening to, and messages giving thanks for "+v". This also includes automatic messages that you trigger manually, such as if you type "/away". This type of message does nothing but clutter the channel with useless information. If someone were really interested they would simply ask you.

  
  

Bots (top)

• lzhh - real person
• workbench - experimental bot
  
  

• lzhh (top, bots)

  lzhh is not strictly a bot, there's a real person behind the nick. However, there are automated scripts loaded on this person's client that perform various channel management tasks. Mostly these scripts enforce the channel rules by temporarily kickbanning whenever someone asks about CGI, uses colors, or sends a public away message.

  
  

• workbench (top, bots)

  This is dngor's experimental bot. It's actually an interface to several bots in the backend. One of the bots does some minimal channel maintenance, and another does language analysis of what's said in channels. It's on several channels (including #poe and #pound-perl.pm), on several networks (including MagNet and EFNet).

  It is also known as workbensh on some networks.