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Ask HN: What's Wrong with IRC?

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Re: Ask HN: What's Wrong with IRC?

#61

Post by dingnuts »

kaladin-jasnah wrote: post #33

Actually, I think my biggest issue with IRC is that at least in the past, it looked like it leaked my IP address to chats, which is a pretty big privacy issue (they can figure out what country/province/national subdivision I live in, and that makes me uncomfortable). While I'm sure Discord or Slack or Teams has my IP address at a company level, at least individuals in a Discord/whatever cannot by default get my IP ad…

this has been configurable in at least some IRCds for a very long time, to hide the host. It's been that way from personal experience for at least fifteen years, but it could be longer.

Re: Ask HN: What's Wrong with IRC?

#62

Post by Arathorn »

steveklabnik wrote: post #9

> Admittedly, I haven't used IRC much and I know the UI/UX isn't the best, I mean, you seem to understand what's wrong. IRC is meaningfully worse to use than Slack/Discord. So people use stuff that's nicer to use. > but that could probably be fixed pretty easily and tacked on to the existing messaging infrastructure? If it were easy, it would have already been done. "The UX isn't great" isn't a recent discovery, it's…

> Element is meaningfully worse to actually use. And it's still the best Matrix client I personally have used.

fwiw we’ve spent the last few years fixing this, starting with mobile, and Element X is the result: https://element.io/labs/element-x. it’s more of a whatsapp/imessage/signal replacement rather than a discord replacement right now, but i really hope we fixed the UX this time.

(edit: that said, at this point i’m worried that even if we made Element better than Discord, it would still have its old reputation to shake off, and I’m blanking on projects who have managed that. just like even if someone built a desktop linux env which outperformed macOS, it might have an uphill struggle for adoption.)

Re: Ask HN: What's Wrong with IRC?

#63

Post by Jtsummers »

Slack started as a set of features over IRC (at least to a large extent), and was compatible with IRC servers for quite a while. Turns out, when you try to make IRC actually suitable to the environments where users aren't always on (among other deficiencies in it for enterprise use-cases), you end up with something sufficiently customized to no longer be IRC.

You can either lie and say it is (but get called it), try to change what IRC is for everyone else (good luck, the open servers don't want your features and consider lack of history a feature not a bug, but it is a "bug" from an enterprise perspective), or create something new out of the old system. Then you get Slack again.

Or you can make a largely from-scratch system (Discord) that resolves these problems from the start rather than trying to patch over something that doesn't actually do what you need.

Or you can try to make a new protocol (XMPP, Matrix) that tries to resolve these and hope people build compatible clients and servers and don't fork it in a way that breaks compatibility.

Re: Ask HN: What's Wrong with IRC?

#64

Post by dwb »

smallerfish wrote: post #28
polpo wrote: post #16

If all you want is text chat with no shared history, sure IRC is fine. But think about these features that the chat apps bring: Search: half-remember some conversation from months/years ago? It's right there, in the app. Persistent history: onboarding a new employee? All of the company's past communication is there to browse and search (see above point). Inline file attachments: need to share a small file or a screen…

Slack's pretty bad as an information repository. How do you know there hasn't been a subsequent discussion that updated the conclusion of a particular chat? Search isn't particularly consistent in how it serves up results. By all means chat asynchronously to decide on something, but then get it into a wiki. I actually like Slack's auto-expiry for free accounts, as it incentivizes the mindset - if you want to keep the…

Exactly the opposite of my long-term experience – Slack search is good enough that it’s my first port of call for information, and regularly finds me the right answer. It’s a better information repository in practice than any other system I’ve used at work. That is kind of sad, of course I think “proper” documentation is better, but such is life.

Re: Ask HN: What's Wrong with IRC?

#65

Post by duskwuff »

adamc wrote: post #49
smallerfish wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slack's pretty bad as an information repository. How do you know there hasn't been a subsequent discussion that updated the conclusion of a particular chat? Search isn't particularly consistent in how it serves up results. By all means chat asynchronously to decide on something, but then get it into a wiki. I actually like Slack's auto-expiry for free accounts, as it incentivizes the mindset - if you want to keep the…

This is the wrong point of view for many (probably most) workplaces, where the officially "maintained" information repositories are often very out of date and where the alternatives are usually: 1) Find a conversation you can at least start from, or 2) Get someone to give you a brain dump now. Sure, a curated, well-maintained repository could be better. It also requires work time that usually doesn't get budgeted for…

Being able to say, "I know this issue came up a few months ago, let me see what we decided back then" -- and being able to back that up with a link -- is a superpower. Not everything that comes up in discussions gets documented.

Re: Ask HN: What's Wrong with IRC?

#66

Post by doubled112 »

nutrie wrote: post #12
doubled112 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't just tell Julie in HR to get a persistent shell session and set up her bouncer. For Matrix, you can say "go to chat.company.com" and click log in with Google.

> For Matrix, you can say "go to chat.company.com" and click log in with Google. And half of them logs in with their private Google account.

Usually not as bad as allowing personal GitHub accounts to be added company teams.

Eventually somebody starts wondering who spikeycactusplant4589 is.

Re: Ask HN: What's Wrong with IRC?

#67

Post by iExploder »

theideaofcoffee wrote: post #40
polpo wrote: post #16

If all you want is text chat with no shared history, sure IRC is fine. But think about these features that the chat apps bring: Search: half-remember some conversation from months/years ago? It's right there, in the app. Persistent history: onboarding a new employee? All of the company's past communication is there to browse and search (see above point). Inline file attachments: need to share a small file or a screen…

Being able to search in the past for a half-remembered conversation sounds great until you have idiotic, asinine corporate data retention policies that require anything beyond 90 days to be deleted anyway, for some bullshit reason like being open to litigation or whatever and that being subject to discovery. Then that's implemented with no warning to be able to migrate important info out into a wiki or other document…

> Being able to search in the past for a half-remembered conversation sounds great until you have idiotic, asinine corporate data retention policies that require anything beyond 90 days to be deleted anyway, for some bullshit reason like being open to litigation or whatever and that being subject to discovery.

dude, we work at the same company...

Re: Ask HN: What's Wrong with IRC?

#68

Post by WJW »

weitendorf wrote: post #34

> why don't more companies just set up their own IRC server? Why don't you grow your own food? Why don't you just write your own payment processor? I used to think this way until I started a company with employees. My opinion on the matter changed almost instantaneously. 1. One does not simply set up their own "X". Setting up X takes time and you will also have to manage it, which also takes time (and is harder to an…

I wish I could upvote this twice. Many people only consider monetary cost as "cost" because their own time is basically free. But when you have to pay for any extra time spent on "fixing" IRC to become business capable, the proposition by Slack and their competitors starts to make a lot more sense. Even if you already have people capable of doing the work, do you want to task expensive employees on replicating something you could easily buy at a lower price or do you want to have them work on something that will actually increase revenue?

Re: Ask HN: What's Wrong with IRC?

#69

Post by steveklabnik »

Arathorn wrote: post #62
steveklabnik wrote: post #9

> Admittedly, I haven't used IRC much and I know the UI/UX isn't the best, I mean, you seem to understand what's wrong. IRC is meaningfully worse to use than Slack/Discord. So people use stuff that's nicer to use. > but that could probably be fixed pretty easily and tacked on to the existing messaging infrastructure? If it were easy, it would have already been done. "The UX isn't great" isn't a recent discovery, it's…

> Element is meaningfully worse to actually use. And it's still the best Matrix client I personally have used. fwiw we’ve spent the last few years fixing this, starting with mobile, and Element X is the result: https://element.io/labs/element-x . it’s more of a whatsapp/imessage/signal replacement rather than a discord replacement right now, but i really hope we fixed the UX this time. (edit: that said, at this point…

That's great! To be honest, I was very impressed with how you all handled the criticism of the website, by the way.

I don't generally use Element on mobile, but I will give Element X a try! Thanks for the pointer.

Re: Ask HN: What's Wrong with IRC?

#70

Post by jmclnx »

elric wrote: post #53
duskwuff wrote: post #15

> What's Wrong with IRC? • No support for server-side history, and all that comes with that (usable mobile clients, offline messaging and push notifications to mobile clients, persistent presence in channels, search, editing/deleting messages, auditability, etc). Bouncers are a poor solution, as they aren't part of the IRC server and integrate awkwardly, if at all, with clients. • No support for attachments. (DCC SEN…

> No support for server-side history That's a feature, not a bug. If you want conversations to be searchable, use email. Instant messaging is like phone calls or in person communication: transient (if potentially async). > No support for attachments. Good, no silly gifs cluttering up the chat. But this is a feature that's easily added. > Poor user authentication This one probably has the most merit. But probably easy…

I do not know why you were down voted, but I fully agree with you.

I do not want to see pictures in IRC at all, you want pictures, movies etc, got to one of the many pointy-clicky apps. Or you can PM and send the pic to the person who wants it via email.

No history, good for me, but you want history enable logging in your client.

User authentication - maybe a bit harder for new people, but you also have the option of turning on encryption if you want.

One missing item, with cloaking, you can have anonymity which is lacking in all the other "apps".

I see no need to change IRC at all, and I think the Freenode "owner" tried to change it and a revolt happened. Just about everyone moved to Libera chat.

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