Smogon IRC Rules

Please review all of the following rules before participating in #smogon and #stark. Apply common sense to how you interact with others.

#smogon Rules

• You would do best to lurk for a while before jumping into the chat, regardless of which channels you're on. IRC channels can sometimes be cliquey, so try not to make an ass out of yourself. You might get trolled a bit, but so does everyone who is new. Take it with a grain of salt, and try to act like a normal human being.
• Do not use stupid catchphrases/memes/jokes you picked up from whatever site (4chan, GameFAQs, etc.). For example: "Over 9000," anything with Chuck Norris, etc. The competitive Pokémon community has its own culture and while it's appropriate to use memes from the site they originated from, they aren't appropriate here.
• Chatspeak is frowned on. If you're too lazy to expand "ur", "any1", "sum1", etc. to their correct form then don't bother attending #smogon.
• Do not intentionally misspell words. This includes "teh", "liek", "pwn", and other variations.
• No acronym expanders (lol -> Laughing Out Loud). They are irritating.
• No auto-greets. If you like someone enough to greet them, then do so.
• Do not ask questions that can be easily answered by browsing Smogon. Likewise, if you can figure it out through a quick Google query, please DO so and don't bother the channel.
• IRC is not your personal diary. Don't interrupt established conversation with whatever is currently rambling through your mind. Most of the time, no one cares. Use common sense for this one, friends.
• Despite Smogon.com being a Pokémon oriented site, the channel #smogon is not exclusively about Pokémon. #stark has been created to provide a medium for Pokémon-related chat.
• Respect the operators. Anyone with an @ or % next to their name on the user list is a channel operator. Don't talk back to them, or you might wind up banned.
• Respect the decisions made by said operators. If you are banned, do not private message anyone asking to be unbanned, or why someone banned you. The ops have their status for a reason; just hope you get unbanned and follow the rules in the future.
• Do not ask why someone else was banned, or why operator X did Y and Z. The operators know what they are doing and it is none of your business.
• REFRAIN FROM TYPING MESSAGES IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS
• Don't flood.
• Don't advertise. That means your website, forums, IRC channel, anything.

#stark rules

• #stark is first and foremost a chat dedicated to discussing and helping people with competitive Pokémon. This topic takes precedence over all other topics. If you are going to chat, please chat intelligently.
• When participating in discussions, do not be overly technical. We hate when people are pedantic over an insignificant point.
• Do not troll, abuse stupid scripts that add no content, flood, or consistently type in caps.
• If you're not allowed to do it on the forums or the shoddy chat, you're not allowed to do it here either.