The most important command available to the discerning IRC user is
/ignore. It’s the big equalizer online: If people aggravate
you, just ignore them.
This is of course a crude all-or-nothing solution. Fear not,
rcirc offers alternatives: You can “brighten” your buddies
and “dim” certain other nicks that you don’t want to ignore
altogether.
/ignore ¶This command toggles the ignore status of a nick, if you provide one.
If you don’t provide a nick, the command lists all the nicks you are
ignoring. All messages by ignored nicks are—you guessed it—ignored.
Since only “operators” can kick people from channels, the
ignore command is often the only way to deal with some of the more
obnoxious fellows online. Example: /ignore rudybot.
/bright ¶This command toggles the bright status of a nick, if you provide one.
If you don’t provide a nick, the command lists all the “brightened”
nicks. All messages by brightened nicks are—you guessed
it—brightened. Use this for your friends. Example: /bright
rcy.
/dim ¶This command toggles the dim status of a nick, if you provide one. If
you don’t provide a nick, the command lists all the “dimmed” nicks.
All messages by dimmed nicks are—you guessed it—dimmed. Use this
for boring people and bots. If you are tracking channel activity,
messages by dimmed nicks will not register as activity. Example:
/dim fsbot.