The symbols are and %, which at TPS roughly translate to sysops, admin, moderator and special-ops. Staff will have special symbols in front of their nickname signifying rank. This allows you to have a real time conversation in private with someone, and this method can allow you to much better get to know the person than via PM on the forum. In addition, by clicking on a person's nick on the right of the mIRC screen, you can start an IRC PM with him or her. This is a way someone can let you know they want to talk to you, and vice versa. I also learned another function - the "highlight." When you set this function up properly, if anyone types your name in a channel, the channel will light up in red, a tone will sound, and the mIRC icon in your taskbar will flash. I found if there were pressing issues at TPS I could get my problem solved much more quickly chatting about it in the TPS Staff channel rather than conversing via PM. I suppose the first time I really started to be more active in IRC is when I made staff here.
(Beginners please learn to register and identify your nicknames - very important!) Plus I learned the "Perform" function to preserve my nickname, and to automatically identify my nickname when logging into a server. That's when I learned how to set up an "auto-join" script (provided by the tracker) so that I would automatically re-log in to the channel if I got bumped out. Now at one tracker, I got banned from IRC because for whatever reason I parted the channel and was idling in the Server channel. Some of my trackers gave bonuses for those who idle in IRC channels so I did that, but didn't do much chatting. Back in the old days, the interview was done live in IRC.
Shortly after, I joined the TPS applicant's channel to interview to join TPS. Well I passed and then never joined their member IRC channels. This was stressful enough and note I was already stressed out about the interview itself. (Since I use a Windows computer, that would be mIRC) Then I needed to know how to enter a server (the tracker's) and to log into the interview channel and to set a nickname. The first time I ever used IRC was when I was interviewing for a invite to a "famous big music private tracker." So basically I needed to find out how to get an IRC client.
I strongly preferred to do my communicating on the forums. Occasionally I'd go into the chatroom of a forum if there was some special event, such as if a celebrity or other special person was there, but that was about it. Now when it comes to IRC and chat rooms on the internet, I admit I was never much into them. Note I'm not going to go into a lot of technical detail since there are numerous guides to how to work with IRC channels and servers, and this article is more of a discussion of more of the social aspects.
This is another article geared more towards beginners to torrenting, or to those who are beginners to using IRC (Internet Relay Chat) in a torrent/tracker setting.