Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server
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Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server
1–10 of 370 posts
Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server
#2I don't really understand how switching to a different system is going to do anything about levels of abuse and harassment.
I'm sure it will be easier to use, at least. IRCv3 was trying to solve some of this but I haven't heard a peep in years.
Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server
#3As an IRC user since the early 90s (EFnet and freenode), I can say that it really feels like it is dying. There are still a few popular channels with helpful people, but the vast majority of channels are silent with no one but afk users logged into a seemingly forgotten ‘screen’ session. And of the channels that do have real people, those people often seem to be there for no reason other than to tell people to RTFM, play topic nazi to such an extreme level that apparently nothing is actually on topic, or just generally berate people for having the gall to say something in the channel. Ops are extremely touchy and seem willing to immediately kick people rather than have actual discussions about things that challenge any of their beliefs about a particular topic or how the channel is being run (any such challenge, no matter how genially presented, is perceived as combative and results in a swift kick).
The heyday has past. People moved on, had families and other responsibilities, with no time to sit idly chatting anymore. The newer generations are on various messenger apps, Slack, or Discord.
Though The Lounge looks pretty nice.
Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server
#4I don't really understand how switching to a different system is going to do anything about levels of abuse and harassment. I'm sure it will be easier to use, at least. IRCv3 was trying to solve some of this but I haven't heard a peep in years.
It can put registration and private messages, etc, under their control.
They they can raise their anti-spam bar arbitrarily high to block alt registrations and enforce bans. Sight of all PMs could be used for anti-harrassment too, but don't know if they'd do that.
Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server
#5I don't really understand how switching to a different system is going to do anything about levels of abuse and harassment. I'm sure it will be easier to use, at least. IRCv3 was trying to solve some of this but I haven't heard a peep in years.
The post says the new system will enforce authentication, and hints at dealing with bots and spam accounts. But it’s not going to be easy without inconveniencing users to some extent (or a greater extent than now).
Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server
#6I don't really understand how switching to a different system is going to do anything about levels of abuse and harassment. I'm sure it will be easier to use, at least. IRCv3 was trying to solve some of this but I haven't heard a peep in years.
Spam can be difficult to stop on IRC compared to modern webchat applications. From lacking things like javascript, captchas, cdns, and so on, to having a distributed network architecture and fewer ways to verify users.
Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server
#7I don't really understand how switching to a different system is going to do anything about levels of abuse and harassment. I'm sure it will be easier to use, at least. IRCv3 was trying to solve some of this but I haven't heard a peep in years.
The post says the new system will enforce authentication, and hints at dealing with bots and spam accounts. But it’s not going to be easy without inconveniencing users to some extent (or a greater extent than now).
IRC could enforce authentication without much effort. You could use email registration, etc.
Maybe there's some black magic in other services to do better anti-bot/spam than that?
Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server
#8> We are not rolling our own. Whether we host it ourselves or pay for a service, we’re getting something off the shelf that best meets our needs.
I sincerely hope it’s not Slack and some restricted search archive platform. Moving away from IRC to a newer system could provide long lived archives to users. But if privacy is very important, then a “no archive” option would be fine (similar to IRC). Anything in between, like “search the last 10000 messages”, would be a disaster for active channels with many members.
> It needs to be accessible to the greater Mozilla community. We are evaluating products, not protocols.
I’m sure whichever the chosen product is, it’s going to be based on HTTP to allow “schools, colleges or corporate networks” to be able to connect. It seems weird that we’re dumping everything on to HTTPS, and one day in the future there would be a world where only port 443 would be open and all the mess, and the holiness, would flow through it, and it alone. In the name of securing networks, we seem to have gone to an illusion of security by moving to one port for almost all communications.
> We aren’t picking an outlier; whatever stack we choose needs to be a modern, proven service that seems to have a solid provenance and a good life ahead of it. We’re not moving from one idiosyncratic outlier stack to another idiosyncratic outlier stack.
I still hope it doesn’t come down to Slack or Hipchat or some commercial offering. Maybe host a Matrix instance? Or Mattermost? Or Rocket.chat?
Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server
#9I had a question for the Firefox UX team a few months ago and went to #ux on irc.mozilla.org. The channel was completely dead. Someone that wasn't from the UX team was still there and told me they all moved to a private Slack channel.
Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server
#10I don't really understand how switching to a different system is going to do anything about levels of abuse and harassment. I'm sure it will be easier to use, at least. IRCv3 was trying to solve some of this but I haven't heard a peep in years.
Accessibility, especially from bandwidth efficient light weight software or text only devices is at odds with blocking automated spam.
If you make it much harder for anyone with unusual software to connect, you make it harder for spam (and also a lot more legitimate users than spammers, but those don't count because they don't cause issues for operators).