intro           Introduction to ICB..

Welcome to ICB!

ICB is an ongoing project to connect people together. It provides
a forum where people can meet and share information, ideas, or opinions;
conduct meetings; play games; or do just about anything made
possible with fast electronic communications.

Getting started using ICB is easy. You run "icb" and after a few
seconds, you will be signed on in one of the default groups. A group is
a place where people can talk with one another. Chances are, there will
be other people there, and you'll see them talking. It might look
something like this:

<Joe> hello x
<Amelia> hi x

Usually when you first "sign on", people will say hello to you. Here,
Joe and Amelia said hi, assuming your nickname was "x".

Everyone in ICB has a "nickname". These are used because many
login names are difficult to type, and don't tell you much about the
user. Some users have nicknames like "Dr. X". Others use their real
life names.

Try a "who" command, to see who is signed on. You can do this
with the command:

/who            (show everyone)
/who .          (show just your group)

Note that the command started with a slash. All icb commands start with a
slash (although you can change that).

To send a line of text to the group, just type what you want to say, and
hit RETURN. It will be sent to everyone in your group.

Sooner or later, you're going to see a message that looks like this:

<*Joe*> some text

This means that Joe sent you a "personal message". It is meant only for
you. He sent it with a command that looks like this:

/m x some text

Still assuming your name was "x". You could reply with:

/m joe Joe, you are being silly.

Which would only go to Joe.

I hope this is enough to get you started talking. In other help files,
you can learn more about groups, how to change groups, how to make your
own, etc. I suggest you read--or at least skim--all of the help files.
That way, you'll be able to get the most out of icb.

As a final note, please read the rules. Not only do they say what is
tolerated and what is not (ICB is pretty liberal), but they also tell
you what to do if you run into trouble.

Have fun, and feel free to send me suggestions and bug reports.

Mark J. Reed
<mark@cad.gatech.edu>
