Anyone with enough knowledge of IRC and dal.net can be a helper in #help, as long as they are doing it because they like to help others, and not purely for the status they may get.To start being a helper, you must first read and understand the channel guidelines, so that you may know what is allowed and what isn't.
These guidelines are posted at http://help.dal.net/help/guide.shtml.

After you have read and understood the guidelines, you can start helping in the channel, but it's recommended you contact any of the active ops to let them know you intend to start helping, and that you have already read the guidelines. Please remember that giving help is not a competition. We are not looking for the fastest helper. We are looking for good helpers. People that know what they are talking about. So when you start helping, please be sure you know the right commands before you answer the users questions. If you are not sure about them, let another helper take it, stand back, watch an learn a bit too.

OK, so how do you start climbing the ladder? To become an official #help helper, an Aop/Sop has to sponsor you as his/her Apprentice. You may know a lot about IRC or dal.net, but you'll still be an apprentice, since you have to learn about the channel too. Its the op's choice of whom they sponser, so asking for it won't help you to get it faster. The op will see you, study you and if he/she decides to take you, he/she will let you know. Once you become his/her apprentice, and only then, you can be voiced in the channel.

After you have been an Apprentice for at least one month, you are entitled to get a CFD (Call For Discussion) to evaluate a promotion. The ops will discuss for 1 week your performance in the channel, and after that, they take a vote. If the majority of ops vote to promote you, you go up to the next level, which is Auto Voice. You are still an apprentice, but you can now voice yourself on choice, with the channel bot. This will let you decide when to be voiced and when not to. You can also be opped in the channel as long as there's another op to supervise you, since you get this op for training purposes.

Once again, after you have been an AV for at least one month, you can get another Promotion CFD and vote, and once again, if the majority of the ops vote to promote you, you become an Aop. Once you are aop, you now can participate in the voting process of other new helpers, and take on apprentices yourself, thus continuing the cycle.

Please take in account that if you didn't get promoted in any of ther CFD's called on you, you'll have to wait one month (at least) until a new CFD can be called on you again.

If you have any questions or don't understand anything in this document then please contact an Op.

Written by Puma and revised by Moby