Once you enter Club Wired, you will probably want to say things to people. There are 99 channels. All you need to do is type whatever you want to say, and everyone in your channel will see it.

Example:

At the prompt, alice, whose current "handle" is Bossy, types:

Hello, everyone!

Everyone in her channel sees:

alice/Bossy: Hello, everyone!

Inside Club Wired, online help is available at any time. Just type

/?

from any prompt.

This will list the following basic commands:

/c

Change to another channel.

/M

Post a question to the moderator.

/p

Send a private message.

/h

Change your handle to something else.

/a

See who is currently logged in.

/+

See a list of the advanced commands.

/q

Quit Club Wired.

These commands are case-sensitive; /M invokes a different function than /m.

Note that questions for a guest speaker will be posted to a moderator, who will then select questions to pass on to the speaker. One more way in which HotWired is filtered.

Additional instructions

An alternative way to enter Club Wired is to telnet directly to chat.hotwired.com, port 2428.

Advanced commands:

/C

See who's on your current channel.

/i

Inquire about a specific user.

/y

Inquire about your own stats.

/Q

Read the Club Wired FAQ.

/F

Toggle whether your email address is shown.

/m

Toggle monitoring of the amphitheater.

/t

Display current HotWired local time.

/x

Squelch a user who is bothering you.

/r

Make yourself invisible to such a user.

/N

Name an unnamed channel.

/U

Unname a named channel (except our permanent channels).

/-

List the last several users.

/3

Set your screen width.

/u

Change the character you use to indicate a new line.

//

Send another message to the person you last /p-ed.

/,

Send a message to the last person who /p-ed you.

/b

Beep someone (i.e. make someone's terminal beep).

/6

Toggle whether you allow people to beep you.

/j

Toggle whether "\" is interpreted as a new line, or as just plain "\".

/v

If you're really geeky, you can get version information this way.

/f

Change how messages look on your terminal.

If you have further questions, ask online. You're sure to find some helpful people there.