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Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

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51–60 of 370 posts

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#51

Mozilla's talk: > Our mission is to ensure the Internet is a global public resource, open and accessible to all. An Internet that truly puts people first, where individuals can shape their own experience and are empowered, safe and independent. Mozilla's walk: Fuck it, spin up a Slack room.

Yeah I had the same feeling when reading the following bullet point.

> We are evaluating products, not protocols.

What a disappointment.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#53

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…

So it sounds like regarding moderation, slack is at best on par with irc. And while on orc you can pretty much script and automate anything you want to facilitate the moderation job, with slack you're at the mercy of having some documented or undocumented api call available? One step forwards and two steps back...

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#54
post #21

> 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,…

Matrix shows how thorough the switch to HTTP has become. Like with DoH, what makes Matrix most attractive is the ability to implement solutions using pre-existing web application stacks, like Node.js. It's a sort of path dependency where the easiest way to implement a simple solution starts with a very complex, mostly superfluous foundation. The fact that port 80 and 443 are less likely to be blocked is a distant, se…

Don't forget that if it works over http(s), it's a lot easier to build a web interface for, and that's a big win for ease of use!

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#55
post #37

I don't understand what moving to slack is going to give them, which is inevitably where this is going to lead (or a similar web-based chat). IRC has the same tools for banning users as Slack, if not more powerful as you can ban ranges etc. You can require people to register with an email in the same way slack does, although I'd argue being anonymous and being able to talk without an account is one of IRC's best feat…

> You can require people to register with an email in the same way slack does, although I'd argue being anonymous and being able to talk without an account is one of IRC's best features.

As someone from the “old” and free internet I agree, but there seems to be a new generation of users who seem to have the ability to perform censorship as a core requirement (although they prefer to call it “governance”).

It’s sad to see the direction they are pulling the internet, one of the few truly free platforms which has ever been created.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#56
post #21

> 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,…

Matrix shows how thorough the switch to HTTP has become. Like with DoH, what makes Matrix most attractive is the ability to implement solutions using pre-existing web application stacks, like Node.js. It's a sort of path dependency where the easiest way to implement a simple solution starts with a very complex, mostly superfluous foundation. The fact that port 80 and 443 are less likely to be blocked is a distant, se…

[deleted]

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#57
I use IRC quite heavily. Especially for cryptocurrencies and local hackerspace channels. They're all very active.

But I agree with the post, "irc is not fine", and never was fine if you want to communicate with "regular" people.

It doesn't have spam filters, easy GUI or easy registration process. You could build all of those on top of IRC, and I'm sure that some people did, but there's no "standard" and most people just can't be bothered.

As the post said, often "IRC traffic isn’t allowed past institutional firewalls".

Besides, when was there a time in the history of the internet that irc was used to communicate with laypersons? If that's Mozilla's goal, they're right to switch.

That said, irc is fine, or even the best, for some communities. Especially communities of internet-savvy people.

It's decentralized, open, easy to access and inclusive. Such communities rarely meet the need for spam filters, and each of their members possess a well-distilled taste for personalized tools for irc.

That's why cryptocurrencies or hackerspaces channles are great on irc. That's why #rust channel is fantastic.

I still didn't find any modern substitution as good as irc for those communities. And yes Matrix, I'm looking at you! You're just not there yet.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#58

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,…

As I understand it, to support things like timed bans your only options are undocumented APIs which can change at any point in time. So while some things are documented and possible, not everything is and that's not the level of support we need.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#59

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.

Most channels of open source projects seem very constructive and helpful to this day. I also like lurking on #xkcd. There are still some low traffic channels of traditional communities (you know, those running on their own domain with something like phpbb) where I've known people for ages and still frequently have conversations about nothing and everything.

It's just never been that discoverable as a standalone medium, like connecting to a server and then finding a good channel. That just doesn't happen.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#60

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…

So it sounds like regarding moderation, slack is at best on par with irc. And while on orc you can pretty much script and automate anything you want to facilitate the moderation job, with slack you're at the mercy of having some documented or undocumented api call available? One step forwards and two steps back...

Well, in general you can also ignore people on IRC, you can ban people from channels, and some IRCds support restricted DM permissions which require a user to share channels with you and be _validated_ to message you.

We don't have these sorts of controls in Slack because it's built to support companies with Human Resource departments. Communities like ours don't give the Slack shareholders value.

So in some ways it's worse than IRC.

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