For a long time, the Tor community has been running many day-to-day activities using the IRC network known as OFTC. IRC has worked out well for us, and our community on IRC has been evolving over the years with new people joining in and new channels appearing for specific needs in the organization.

Matrix bridge

The Tor community is opening up its day-to-day conversations by bridging our IRC community the Matrix network. For regular Tor users, it means that you can chat with us using a friendly App like Element. The #tor:matrix.org room or the #tor IRC channel are connected: whichever platform you chose, your message will be shared on both platforms.

To join the conversation with Tor contributors on Matrix, you need a Matrix account. Several providers can get you one. One of these is the Matrix.org Foundation, which allows people to register an account for free. You can register an account on app.element.io.

Once you have a Matrix account, you can either join the Tor Matrix Space to browse the Tor rooms, or directly join the #tor:matrix.org user support room.

OFTC IRC network

Alternatively, if you want to use IRC you can use OFTC's web IRC client:

  1. Open OFTC webchat

  2. 在空白处填入：

    昵称：任何您想取的名字都可以，但要选取您每次使用 IRC 和 Tor 上的人交流时用的同样的昵称。如果您的昵称已经被人使用，您会收到系统的信息，并选择其他昵称。

    频道: #tor

  3. 点击确定

祝贺！您正在使用IRC。

几秒过后，您会自动进入 #tor，这是一个 Tor 的开发者，中继服务器运行者和其他社区成员的聊天室。这里也有些在 #tor 里的随机人员。

您可以在屏幕下方的空白条里输入问题。请您直接输入您的问题，不用输入其他无关内容。

人们也许可以立即做出回复，也可能有所延迟（有些人被列在频道上，但他们可能此刻不在电脑旁，而是记录下频道活动，之后再阅读）。

如果您想和某个特定的人聊天，请以他们的昵称作为您评论的开头，他们通常便会收到通知，告诉他们有个人正试图联系他们。

OFTC often doesn't allow people to use their webchat over Tor. For this reason, and because many people end up preferring it anyway, you should also consider using an IRC client.