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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

#71

Post by preommr »

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.

Idk about firefox, but MDN web docs is somehow the only online reference for js that's usable (other than the ecmascript specification which isn't for quick learning so much as a deep dive into technical details).

It would be a real shame to lose it.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#72

Post by lewisl9029 »

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…

I used to think Discord was the clear winner in this space, providing good moderation tools (being a platform designed originally for gaming), with better scaling characteristics than Slack and having unlimited history, but the Apollo team's recent post on why they chose Spectrum changed my mind: https://blog.apollographql.com/goodbye-slack-hello-spectrum-...

TL;DR: being able to have posts & chats indexed by search engines and allowing users to read posts without signing in is a killer feature for open-source communities. Plus the product itself is open-source.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#74

Post by obhmt »

neiman wrote: post #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 j…

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

That's cool. I don't want to communicate with regular people, I want to communicate with hackers. If I wanted to communicate with regular people I would use Twitter.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#75

Post by fulafel »

There's really a need for IM interop. These fragmented islands stall the network effect (Metcalfe's law) that is needed to sustain and grow communities.

I guess the best thing for the current situatio would be a headless service that would connect to your IM identities, and buffer messages, from many different IM identities and protocols. You would then have intermittedly connected web or terminal or mobile apps as its clients. Does something like this exist?

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#76

Post by spamthrowaway »

laughinghan wrote: post #68
josteink wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

How would you have them deal with harassment and spam, or do you not believe it is as much of a problem for them as they claim it is?

I wrote a short reply to this, and then HN for whatever reason flagged it as spam and wouldn’t allow me to post.

I think that provides a great meta-comment supporting my stance on not allowing too much central control and censorship.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#77

Post by DCoder »

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,…

Looking through Mozilla's IRC quote collection [0] also shows very little recent activity. Not sure if that's because their channels are less active nowadays, or just because fewer people are submitting new material.

[0]: http://quotes.burntelectrons.org/top

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#78

Post by andai »

If I'm reading this correctly, the main problems they have with IRC is that it's too "old"/obscure, and too open — simultaneously too difficult and too easy to access. Hard to control who gets in and what they say.

I haven't seen much spam or harassment on IRC, but I haven't been to Mozilla's server.

As for newbie accessibility, doesn't a web gateway solve that? You could change the font family from monospace to Lato and it's instantly 20 years more modern :)

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#79

Post by nwmcsween »

Certhas wrote: post #49
ori_b wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

If the majority of users cannot figure out how to type /nickserv register do you really want to talk to them? Consider it a filter

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#80

Post by andai »

andai wrote: post #78

If I'm reading this correctly, the main problems they have with IRC is that it's too "old"/obscure, and too open — simultaneously too difficult and too easy to access. Hard to control who gets in and what they say. I haven't seen much spam or harassment on IRC, but I haven't been to Mozilla's server. As for newbie accessibility, doesn't a web gateway solve that? You could change the font family from monospace to Lato…

> And when we’re talking about blind spots and invisible social access controls, of course, what we’re really talking about is privilege. “Working in the open”, in a world where computation was scarce and expensive, meant working in front of an audience that was lucky enough to go to university or college, whose parents could afford a computer at home, who lived somewhere with broadband or had one of the few jobs whose company opened low-numbered ports to the outside world; what it didn’t mean was doxxing, cyberstalking, botnets, gamergaters, weaponized social media tooling, carrier-grade targeted-harassment-as-a-service and state-actor psy-op/disinformation campaigns rolling by like bad weather. The relentless, grinding day-to-day malfeasance that’s the background noise of this grudgefuck of a zeitgeist we’re all stewing in just didn’t inform that worldview, because it didn’t exist.

http://exple.tive.org/blarg/2018/11/09/the-evolution-of-open...

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