[meta] When and for what to use IRC in telecons?

Hi!

Just a general question which came to my mind, being new to the WG: For what
uses is IRC meant in a telecon? 

Of course, for technical things like self muting, and for voting, IRC is
needed, that's clear to me. But most minutes I read always had pretty large
portions of parallel /relevant/ discussion on IRC. And if I do not know
about these IRC discussions, then I would miss important information, I
believe. So I concluded that IRC is generally regarded to be equally
important to voice. 

But when I tried to follow both channels in the two telecons I participated
now, I always got a headache after a few minutes. Well, that's my problem of
course, I'm not accustomed to use IRC, and I will try to get familiar with
it over time. But I only wanted to know what is the current "IRC policy" (I
don't find a better word, sorry) in our WG.

Ah, and yet another question: What are these "[Scribe assist by...]" entries
in the IRC log?

Cheers,
Michael

--
Dipl.-Inform. Michael Schneider
FZI Forschungszentrum Informatik Karlsruhe
Abtl. Information Process Engineering (IPE)
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Email: Michael.Schneider@fzi.de
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