People from all over the world are welcome to our chatrooms, regardless of race or belief. Therefore we will not tolerate any racist remarks. We must not judge people from a country where there is a war or uprising, usually the innocent people suffer from biased opinions.

We strive to make our chatrooms a place where everyone feels welcome. In order to do this, we have to enforce a few rules for all chatters to follow. These rules are made to be upfront BEFORE you join in our chatrooms. If you do not agree to these rules, join another room.

We aren't fascists and we don't punish users for little things, but we would appreciate it if visitors stuck to the rules. The consequences of breaking said rules may result in a warning, muting, a kick or even a ban.

No harassment of any kind, sexual or otherwise. No personal attacks, insults, sexual harrasment or flames. (Sarcasm in your remarks towards others that can be interpreted as a flame or any other words that can be deemed offensive. It is constructed attacks on other users. This includes Insults, bigotry and "newbie trolling". We do not appreciate our users being subjected to such behaviour.)

We would like to keep our chatrooms a place where people can chat with friends and share ideas. This is one of our most important rules, and violating it will most likely get you kicked and banned

No obscene/illegal material or conversations. No links to obscene or illegal material are allowed. Conversations that would be deemed excessive "adult" are not allowed either - we have kids visiting these chatrooms, so keep that in mind. Bad words are absolutely not tolerated in the chatroom.

No negative racial/sexist/etc. remarks. Simple as that. If it's an insulting remark against a person or group of people, we don't want it here. We firmly believe that racism is an utter injustice. Never make any kind of remarks/insults that reeks of racism. When in doubt, don't.

Avoid discussing religions. Religion is an extremely sensitive topic for many people. Even though you might want to say something positive/totally neutral about a religion, please hold it - you never know how others would interprete your words, or what others are going to comment on your opinion. And never, ever insult religions.

No excessive swearing. We try to keep the chatrooms as clean as possible. If you want to swear, go somewhere else. You will be warned if an Op feels you're starting to overdo it; if you ignore the warning, serious consequences will follow.

However, chatters who use bad words will be banned and kicked without any warning.

Do not fight in public. If you happen to strongly disagree with a chatter and want to have a debate that might turn fierce, please use private messaging (/msg username). If you feel offended at a chatter and think the person has violated one or more of the rules shown in this page, please contact an Op about it instead of fighting in public.

No obscene nicknames. This includes that Ident and Full Name areas should not be of a script with foul words or offensive language. We reserve the right to kick/ban you if your nickname is not acceptable, but we will attempt to warn you first.

No spamming or flooding. We all know the word "Spam" and the disgust the word entails.

Flooding means to send a large amount of text to a channel in a short amount of time. In some cases this can be someone constantly changing the channel topic or their nickname every few seconds. Channel jumping is a type of flooding. It is when someone joins and leaves a channel repeatedly in a short amount of time.

Please, do not take part in flooding, spamming or generally repeating insane comments over and over. Flooders' aim is to ruin other people's fun with anti-social behaviour.

Caps and colours. While some GW in-jokes involve caps lock, it does not need to be on at all times. Excessive use of Caps or Colours will result in a warning as they do little for the channel and aren't constructive to conversation, unless in the guise of a humorous joke (using caps lock sparsely). Note that colours get very annoying, very quickly; especially some of the brighter hues. Refrain from using colours all the time.

CAPITAL LETTERS are seen as yelling and when done repeatedly is very annoying and very rude. Excessive use of punctuation marks like ! and ? (more than 3) also falls under this rule.

Changing nicks. Do not change your nickname excessively, this is bothersome and may cause you to be kicked or even banned.

Bad English: Do not insult chatters for bad english. Some chatters have difficulty in comprehension, as English is their second language, and may not be able to communicate into the standard you would like them too. Accept them as they are. We are not running a literacy school here - as soon as they gain confidence, they stay in the room, because they feel comfortable and accepted.

No op-begging.This includes hop and voice begging. Ops, Hops and Voice are earned and are not given away at random. Bothering the ops about it will result in a refusal and wont bode well for you when new ops are chosen. Excessive begging will be deemed as harassment of the Ops and may result in kicks or bans.

Advertising. While advertising for the purpose of advertising is not permitted, showing users a link to your site in context is acceptable.

No illegal activity (porn, hacking, DoS, etc...) Hackers & Nukers: Cybercrime laws have been passed to prosecute anyone who breaks the privacy act. By hacking user's PCs and stealing important information or damaging them, hackers can earn 10 years in jail if found guilty.

Everyone should have some form of firewall, as it will log any IP the hackers use and can be traced to internet provider address. The Federal Police has the right to demand for the person's address and telephone number if said person is suspected of any damages to another person's computer. Federal police forces all over the world can seize that person's computer and check all his data for any online activities. No matter how she/he deleted the files there's always a way to find out.

Do not try to lure members of any IRCHATROOMS channel into any others. This is one of the biggest no-no's and is punishable by banning. The chatrooms we provide are meant to be a gathering place for our community, not a recruiting ground for whoever decides to open a new chatroom and needs people to fill it. Any advertising for other non-IRCHATROOMS channels in the chatroom and/or via query/msg is to be reported to one of the operators immediately.

Bots. While IRC Bots can be fun, only Ops are permitted to have bots in the rooms unless special permission is given. This is to ensure that flooding and spamming do not occur.

Age Limit - As with the ICQ program and other parts of ICQ, the minimum age for using IrCQNet is 13. Any nick that is known to be 12 or under will be asked to leave the channel. Please read ICQ Terms Of Service - IrCQ-Net (ICQ IRC Service) Terms of Use at http://www.icq.com/legal/ircqnet.html

Arguing about these Rules of Conduct is not usually permitted. The rules are there for a reason. The fact is, if you choose to make this place un-enjoyable for everyone else, you will be dealt with. We reserve the right to make bans of your username permanent, so if you don't think you can control your conduct, go elsewhere. The chatrooms are here so people can have fun and chat with friends. Don't try to ruin it for others.

While this list of rules may seem like we are "the man" and trying to oppress your fun, this is not the case. We wish to provide an enjoyable experience for users and operators alike, and this cannot come to pass should a user or rogue operator decide to spoil things for everyone else. Operators and users are both subject to this Code of Conduct and both will undergo the consequences of violating the rules. Overall we wish you a fun, happy time and full of fond memories.

Try to work out trouble or avoid trouble with other users BEFORE it turns into a nuke-a-thon. Work together. The network belongs to EVERYONE, and we're all expected to be able to get along. If someone repeatedly pisses you off, either don't go in channels that they frequent, or you have a feature called /ignore. USE IT.

The most widely understood and spoken language on IRC is English. However! As IRC is used in many different countries, English is by no means the only language. If you want to speak some other language than English (for example with your friends), go to a separate channel and set the topic (with /topic) to indicate that.

Ahhhhh, cyber-love. Such a new and wonderful concept, that is until you see the person you're talking to in person! **chuckle** Just kidding there folks. While chatting away you may come across someone who happens to have your same interests. And after talking with this person for some time you may become attracted to them and vice versa. It just might be what we call in cyberspace, cyber-love. A lot of people out there have met their significant others through the computers and why shouldn't you?

There's just a few things to follow and to keep an eye on. Considering that this relationship maybe over a long distance the chances of you meeting the other person are almost next to none. But don't let this stop you from keeping in contact of each other. Usually people will keep in contact through e-mail, regular mail, and sometimes phone calls. And if you do somehow find a way to meet, hey more power to you! Just keep in mind however that things can happen in a chat just as they do outside. An example would be cyber-cheating. Just as the name implies, cheating can happen on a computer just as in real life. Just read those stories of married people having affairs on-line. All I can say is, cheating through a computer is ridiculous, but unfortunately it happens. And like I mentioned of other stuff happening, they can also be messing around with someone not on-line and totally stabbing you in the back.

Just be careful when getting into a long distance relationship with someone, it may seem great and everything, but something just might be lurking under the surface.