Ever exited out of IRC without telling people why? Don’t know how to tell people why you’re leaving? Then you need to use quit messages. Really. It’s just annoying to see people randomly leave with no reasoning.

By default, when you exit most IRC clients (including pidgin), the quit message will look something like “normaldotcom has quit (Quit: normaldotcom).” The preferred way to exit out of a channel or an IRC session is using the /quit IRC command. It’s pretty simple, just type “/quit leaving to do something in real life with real people.” This will notify others of your departure, and your reasoning for doing so. It’s just a lot nicer and a lot less annoying. Practice proper IRC etiquette and use /quit !