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Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

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Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#41

Post by dblohm7 »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #34
axaxs wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not wrong, even if it is an unpopular opinion. It's really sad to me as an early internet user. Their side projects have all seemed to fail, and Firefox has never been further behind. I don't see them as being solvent in as little as a few years.

That's too harsh IMO. FF is working absolutely great on my desktops, phone, and as dev browser. And Rust seems extremely popular with a vocal minority on HN at least. But yeah, I'm concerned as well - Mozilla should focus on producing a good browser rather than pouring energy into side projects such as Rust and especially WASM which do not contribute to that goal.

To the contrary, I would say that Rust and WASM are a couple of the “side projects “ that are most relevant to that goal.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#42

Post by axaxs »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #40
axaxs wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to believe that, and even tried to go all Firefox for the previous two weeks. I will say they have good Sync, which nobody outside of Chrome had achieved at all. The desktop browser is mostly OK, no real complaints. On mobile, however, Firefox is noticeably slower than any of the usual blink based browsers, and most importantly to me, uses way more battery life. I love PL things and am glad Rust exists, but fr…

For me, speed and bandwith savings come from using uBlock in FF, especially on mobile.

That's what I'd been trying. But I've found that Brave and even Opera (issues aside) do it better, and at a fraction of battery life. On my phone battery is king, so I really wish that part were fixed.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#43

Post by tastroder »

duskwuff wrote: post #27
ori_b wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Registration solves this rather well. Especially when paired with requiring an email account to get a registration password.

At the expense of making it even more complicated for users -- especially inexperienced users, or users on mobile devices -- to access the chat.

Realising that I am at a point where I don't reflect the majority of their user base, how did we get to the point that registering via anything that's not a fancy web interface is considered too hard for inexperienced users?

I'm relatively certain that wasn't considered a problem back when I got into IRC and there were more active networks and channels out there. You for whatever reason logged on and were often greeted by messages or even a bot that helped through the sign-up process. Even most GUI clients contained relatively straightforward ways to automate the authentication steps afterwards as well. Again realizing that I'm now in the "snarky old grump" position, discord and slack often feel like a step in the wrong direction. On the one hand it's nice that these platforms include rich media, message archiving/replay, and technically inept users (although the latter would have worked fine with bouncers/webapps back in the day), on the other hand it's just moving my personal communication to yet another corporate silo with weird monetisation.

Not trying to imply that IRC would represent something more convenient messaging wise but did we really have to move in the completely different direction there just to integrate a few solutions and add monetisation?

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#45

Post by bamboozled »

travbrack wrote: post #32
orev wrote: post #3

As 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,…

>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…

Came to say the same, I can hardly remember participating in a constructive conversation over IRC within the last 10-15 years. Not saying they don’t happen, just my experience has been the same as the parent posters.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#46

Post by BenTheElder »

TheSwordsman wrote: post #33

As an admin helping out the Go Slack workspace, which is about to cross 39,500 registered users, they would be ill-advised to go with Slack if moderation is one of their goals. Full disclosure: our Workspakce does have some sort of agreement with Slack, so our space isn't a free space (we have full history), and even then we aren't able to get them to provide support around moderation of users. There is no mechanism…

Kubernetes also had (has?) pretty major issues with these, but a community member built some tools using what APIs they do have to make the moderation aspects easier at least: https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/slack-infra

E.G. Reporting: https://twitter.com/KatharineBerry/status/110594147072323584...

Bulk-Deletion / banning: https://twitter.com/KatharineBerry/status/111310119103288934...

They've been really helpful, but Slack still seems _far_ from ideal for this.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#47

Post by josteink »

ve55 wrote: post #6
Dylan16807 wrote: post #2

I 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.

> From lacking things like javascript, captchas, cdns, and so on

In what way are any of these technologies relevant for a chat platform?

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#48

Post by Certhas »

duskwuff wrote: post #27
ori_b wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Registration solves this rather well. Especially when paired with requiring an email account to get a registration password.

At the expense of making it even more complicated for users -- especially inexperienced users, or users on mobile devices -- to access the chat.

How Long has it been since an inexperienced user found their way onto IRC?

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#49

Post by Certhas »

ori_b wrote: post #20
kibwen wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could levy this complaint if they actually end up picking Slack (or something similarly proprietary like Discord), but that seems quite premature. I'll miss moznet as much as anyone, but there's no denying that IRC has been left in the dust this past decade or more.

It seems that by left in the dust, you mean "remained lightweight and simple". The popular alternatives so far don't seem to have any clients I find pleasant to use, and are rather strongly discouraging anyone from writing third party clients.

No, by left in the dust they mean plummeting usage numbers.

It seems your priorities are not well aligned with those of the majority of users...

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#50

Post by StudentStuff »

bamboozled wrote: post #45
travbrack wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Came to say the same, I can hardly remember participating in a constructive conversation over IRC within the last 10-15 years. Not saying they don’t happen, just my experience has been the same as the parent posters.

Depends on the channel, Mozilla's IRC has channels (like #deeplearning) with helpful people ready to hold your hand through using and extending Mozilla TTS & Mozilla DeepSpeech.
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