Help — how Autism Forge works

Everything about how Autism Forge works, in one place. (This is the page behind every ❓ Help button on the site.)

How this place works

• The community moderates itself. Any registered member can start a vote to kick someone: type /votekick nick reason in chat, or open a ban vote on the forum's Votes page. If enough people agree, it happens. Ops mostly keep the servers running.
• Nobody is silenced completely. If you get banned, you can still read everything the ops post, talk to the ops in chat, and open a thread in the Ban appeals forum. Bans from votes are temporary.
• Your IP is private. Everyone appears as an internal 10.x.x.x address — /whois never shows anyone's real IP, and voice/cam calls are relayed through our server so peers can't see it either.
• File sharing is public. Anything you share is announced to everyone in #main, and self-destructs after 10 minutes. There is deliberately no private file sending, and archives/executables are refused.
• Every page is yours. All site pages (including the front page and this one) are wiki pages any member can edit. Every edit is kept as a revision; ops or a community vote can roll any edit back.
• Something wrong right now? The chat page has a red 🚨 Summon help button — it pings every op who is online and leaves a note for the rest. Anyone may use it, guests included.

Accounts & signing in

You can read everything and chat as a guest with no account. An account (one login for the site, forum, and IRC) lets you post on the forum, vote, share files, and keep a profile. Register with a username and password — or use Sign in with Google on the login page, which creates your account from your Google profile in one click. Your profile (photo, age/gender/location) is always optional, always editable, and profile photos are webcam-only by design: real moments, not curated images.

A/S/L, with colours

Type /asl 24 nonbinary Leeds in chat (or set it in your forum profile). Your gender shows up in its colour next to your nick. Use /asl - for age if you'd rather not say, and other:yourword for anything not on the list.

Voice & cam calls

In the web chat you can start a voice/cam or voice-only call in a channel. Everyone in a call gets a little 📹/🎤 marker next to their nick. Calls are relayed through our server, so other participants never learn your IP address.

Connect with a normal IRC client

The web chat is just IRC underneath. Any client works:

/server add autismforge autismforge.com/6697 -tls
/set irc.server.autismforge.sasl_mechanism plain
/set irc.server.autismforge.sasl_username YOUR_NAME
/set irc.server.autismforge.sasl_password YOUR_PASSWORD
/connect autismforge

Handy commands once you're in: /asl, /votekick nick reason (web chat only — see below for desktop clients), /whois nick (you'll see their 10.x address and coloured A/S/L). Voice and cam calls only work in the web chat. If you signed up with Google, set a password on your profile page first — IRC clients need one.

Using /votekick from a desktop IRC client

VOTEKICK is a custom command of this server, so many desktop clients (irssi shows "Unknown command: votekick") refuse to send it. The raw command also needs the channel name:

/quote VOTEKICK #main nick :the reason

• irssi: use /quote as above, or run /set dispatch_unknown_commands ON once — after that plain /votekick #main nick :reason works. Permanent shortcut: /alias VOTEKICK quote VOTEKICK $0- then /save.
• WeeChat: /quote VOTEKICK #main nick :reason.
• HexChat: sends unknown commands to the server as-is, so /votekick #main nick :reason just works.

How the vote works: the same command is also how you cast your ballot — repeat it to vote yes on a running vote. /quote VOTEKICK #main alone shows the current vote's status. You must be logged in to a forum account (guests can't vote) and connected for at least 5 minutes; 3 yes-votes within 2 minutes kick and ban for 24 hours. One running vote per channel, with cooldowns per target and per starter.