Services for IRC are set up unencrypted and SSL encrypted on ports 6667 and 6697 respectively. The MOTD will be edited if any rules are changed (to keep it simple, I'm not putting them here). The rules on IRC are the most permissive, since it's really only about speech, and other than DoS attacks, there's not much you can really do to harm it. Just, please, don't encourage children to join, and if children are present, it would be best to avoid adult-themed conversations. That's really the jist of it.
Nickserv is indeed setup via anope as well as a few other bots. As of right now, the only unique bot is Tiffany, who provides notification services for thelounge users. Users not in a channel will be auto-joined to #lobby after so many seconds have passed as a way of helping newcomers, which I suspect to be the majority of any new visitors.
If you're new to IRC, this is not a bad server to learn on as long as you're patient for a response. There aren't likely to be many users at any given time. The server is more for people to get ahold of Kaylee (KohlraksGirl) or I.