Website/IRC

LibreOffice/TDF has many IRC channels on Libera Chat.

Channels
The available channels include:


 * - General help
 * - The QA/IRC channel
 * - Development
 * - Infrastructure and Websites
 * - Design Team
 * - DLP
 * - Documentation team
 * - Localization teams
 * - Bridge to the LibreOffice Telegram channel: the objective of this channel is to share information and experiences amongst community members, and not to support end users
 * - Diversity and Inclusion IRC channel
 * - Hackfest channel with a bridge to the telegram group

There are also language-specific support channels. They are usually mentioned in the "Get Help / Community Support" section in the localized LibreOffice websites. The channel names have the locale code appended to the end of libreoffice, ie.
 * Finnish is ,
 * French is ,
 * German is ,
 * Italian is ,
 * Japanese is ,
 * Russian is ,
 * Hispanic is ,
 * Korean is ,
 * and so on.

Connecting to our IRC Channels
Either use your favorite IRC client, or use your browser:
 * https://irc.documentfoundation.org/

Using a Matrix client to join
Using a Matrix client like Element or Nheko you can simply join the LibreOffice Space (  #libreoffice-space:matrix.org  ) and from there easily join the bridged LibreOffice topic IRC channels. Some native language communities also are not present on IRC but created Matrix rooms instead, or bridged Telegram groups, which are listed in the space as well.

Tips and tricks for running IRC Channels
To see the list of channels with specific words in the name (for for example, libreoffice) /msg alis list #libreoffice*

To make the topic persistent: /msg chanserv set #channel keeptopic on

To make ChanServ join the channel: /msg chanserv set #channel guard on

To enable OP powers (if you have privs in the channel): /msg ChanServ OP #channel username

Once you have OP powers, you can...

Set the : /topic Put whatever you want to be the topic here. It will overwrite whatever is currently present

Use for help about commands on Libera Chat /msg ChanServ help command_name

More tips for Libera Chat:
 * https://libera.chat/guides

Etiquette

 * 1) Do not ask to ask
 * When in the IRC channel, do not ask permission to ask or solicit blanket help, like “Can I ask a Question?” or “Can someone help me?”. Just ask the specific question you have, if someone knows the answer and is willing to respond, he will. Asking what we call 'meta-question' is perceived like a bait, asking people to volunteer for an unspecified task. Such meta-questions are typically ignored or someone will tell you to 'not ask to ask'.
 * 1) Do not /msg people without asking, do not spam-ping
 * It is common on IRC to set-up one's client so that you get a special visual or audible notification when your nick name shows up in the chat. That is why you will see on occasion “ping ” on the channel. that is a way to attract the attention of that someone. It is very impolite to randomly ping people, based on the list of connected user to the channel, to solicit attention. Even worse it to start a private message channel via /msg for the same purpose.
 * 1) Be precise
 * Express your question with enough details so that someone who is not you and does not have the benefit of seeing what you are doing and what your screen looks like can have an idea of what you are referring to. The 'I tried to build, but it did not work' statement is useless. You need to tell what you were trying to accomplish, give some specific informations about your environment (OS version, etc..), what you saw that made you think that 'did not work', any error, warning message, any feedback from the computer as to what happened ? Importantly, see #4 about how to communicates these informations.
 * 1) Do not flood the channel, use a pastebin
 * Sometime to provide the necessary informations you need to show a substantial amount of data. Do NOT cut and paste all that in the channel, that is called 'flooding' and will get you kicked out faster than you can Ctrl-V a second time. For anything that does not fit in one line or two, use a pastebin service. Pastebins are public services (web sites) where you can paste your text and everybody can access them as a URL. Just paste your contents there and send the URL into the channel. Provide some context to it, to explain what this is about, unless that is a direct reply to a request for information by someone else in the channel, in which case you can just put the nickname of the person you are responding to and the link.
 * 1) Be patient
 * Give people time to answer. Sometimes you may get an answer in seconds, sometime it can take a while. Bear in mind that the world is a big place with 24 hours worth of time zones. A good chunk of the world may be sleeping while you ask your question. Ask your question and stay connected, sometimes someone who knows the answer will only notice your question a hour or more later… leave your irc connected to maximize your chances. If really no one is picking up on your question —it may be a slow day, or no-one feels up to the challenge— you can fall back to the Mailing list, that will have the eyes of a different set of people, and more visibility overall.
 * 1) Do Not Repeat yourself, do not nag/topic
 * Asking the same question repeatedly in short interval is not going to get you an answer faster, quite the contrary.
 * 1) Read the /topic
 * The IRC channel as a "topic", which is a line or two of message that describe the channel purpose and give some tips and links. Asking something that is answered already in the topic is a sure way to get ignored.
 * 1) Don't get offended
 * IRC communication can be terse, add to that the fact that English is not the native language of most people on the channel, that they are of all age and cultural background.. so it is easy to take a message the wrong way. Don't. In almost all case that was not intended, and if it was, it is still better to ignore the bait and not escalate things.