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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

#91

Post by Razengan »

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,…

> play topic nazi to such an extreme level that apparently nothing is actually on topic

This is the same state of many subreddits on Reddit. Moderation should be limited to spam and blatant attacks on users. Let the voting system handle all the rest.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#92

Post by progval »

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…

> As for newbie accessibility, doesn't a web gateway solve that?

Until this week, Rust's Community page [1] linked to Mibbit, which allowed you to join IRC just by entering a username and pressing Enter.

Now there's only the Discord button, which works the same (besides an extra click to accept the ToU), and you get a popup and a red banner asking you to register.

[1]: https://www.rust-lang.org/community

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#93

Post by eterm »

Razengan wrote: post #91
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,…

> play topic nazi to such an extreme level that apparently nothing is actually on topic This is the same state of many subreddits on Reddit. Moderation should be limited to spam and blatant attacks on users. Let the voting system handle all the rest.

And then everything ends up like the 'defaults', with memes and easy to vote up pictures utterly dominating.

Despite scrapping the office "defaults" list, there is still clearly a rotation that get set up as default and they are by and large garbage.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#94

Post by bartread »

wahern wrote: post #21
newscracker wrote: post #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,…

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…

> Frankly, I've never been on a network that blocked other outbound ports.

That's just down to who you've worked for. I've worked for two companies, both well-known brands, both operating in the consumer space (nothing secret/shady), where most outbound ports were blocked.

In one case it certainly was possible to get them unblocked for access to specific hosts or endpoints but you'd have to go through an approval process that took about a week. I never had a request refused but it certainly could slow progress, although I got into the habit of trying to get all of us to anticipate what we might need and front-load such requests.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#95

Post by josteink »

spystath wrote: post #83

It's a shame that IRC usage is dwindling especially in techie circles. However I can understand it if it doesn't work for them any more although in my opinion IRC has a lot of moderation tools available. In any case, the "problem", of sorts, is not abandoning IRC but what comes next. The web is choke full of proprietary communication protocols that cannot talk to each other and you have private entities acting as gat…

> This goes beyond Slack or Discord or chat-app-of-the-month.

I can probably name up to 10 chat-networks and products which is existed in the 90s. None remain.

IRC does though. Exactly because it wasn’t a product, but instead a protocol specification.

Whatever rationale Mozilla has for this, it’s going to be proven short sighted.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#96

Post by gtirloni »

IshKebab wrote: post #82
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…

It's not hugely surprising that Slack lacks spam/moderation tools. Their target market is companies, where "I'm your boss, please stop doing that" is usually sufficient!

Agreed. It's surprising open source projects picked it.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#97

Post by gtirloni »

josteink wrote: post #95
spystath wrote: post #83

It's a shame that IRC usage is dwindling especially in techie circles. However I can understand it if it doesn't work for them any more although in my opinion IRC has a lot of moderation tools available. In any case, the "problem", of sorts, is not abandoning IRC but what comes next. The web is choke full of proprietary communication protocols that cannot talk to each other and you have private entities acting as gat…

> This goes beyond Slack or Discord or chat-app-of-the-month. I can probably name up to 10 chat-networks and products which is existed in the 90s. None remain. IRC does though. Exactly because it wasn’t a product, but instead a protocol specification. Whatever rationale Mozilla has for this, it’s going to be proven short sighted.

It depends. If they choose something open like Matrix or XMPP, it could work well in the long-term.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#98

Post by fulafel »

ATsch wrote: post #81
fulafel wrote: post #75

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 i…

sounds like matrix.org

I think bridges are not a good enough level of integration. You really need to have your personal connection to your IRC servers.

(Unless the matrix IRC bridge connects to the IRC server with a server-to-server type connection and can thus address messages from/to virtual users on the IRC protocol level. But that would need a lot of coordination and authorizations from IRC server administrators, which brings in so much friction that it probably kills the idea.)

edit: it seems possible that the matrix irc bridge will make a new client irc connection per bridged user, which sounds like a better idea. hard to make out from the docs though.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#99

Post by gtirloni »

obhmt wrote: post #74
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.

And you're not Mozilla (which does want to communicate with laypeople) so...

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#100

Post by josteink »

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #89
josteink wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't really understand how switching to a different system is going to do anything about levels of abuse and harassment. It’s just another failed attempt at trying to find a technical solution to a social problem.

Do you have any social solutions to the “social problem”?

The standard solution? Culturing people?

Technical solutions are placebos at best.

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