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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

#151

Post by TheSwordsman »

minikites wrote: post #123
TheSwordsman wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

>you can ban people from channels Why not ban them completely and have a private appeal process? How often are people a nuisance in one channel yet valuable in another?

More than you'd imagine. Someone may be strongly against a feature, library, or tool and their presence in a channel focused on that thing may not be ideal.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#152

Post by sumedh »

xfitm3 wrote: post #131
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…

Slack is trash and hostile to users, but unfortunately, it has significant momentum. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mozilla switches over.

> Slack is trash and hostile to users

It seems better than Skype and Hipchat and whatever Google's latest chat app.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#153

Post by jlongster »

lewisl9029 wrote: post #72
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…

Spectrum is good for lightweight communities but it is nowhere near the capabilities of something like Discord, which something as big as the Mozilla project needs.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#154

Post by johncolanduoni »

caf wrote: post #90
IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, slack has seen exponential growth, while IRC was always available but rarely used. We have seen this before and we will see it again. If OSS wants to be widely used, it needs to take UI seriously, and not dismiss it as frivolous “eye-candy”. It’s ok so say ‘no, we are fine within our niche’. But then you don’t get to arrogantly explain to them how they are “taking one step forward, two back” by not embarking…

It seems a bit rich to be complaining about "fiddling with config files" when the alternative in this specific case is writing custom code against an undocumented API ;)

The difference is only a small number of users need to write that custom code, while with tools like IRC everyone needs to fiddle with config files.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#155

Post by TheSwordsman »

lewisl9029 wrote: post #72
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…

I use Discord all the time; it's a mess. Its permissions model is complex and hard to reason about, obvious UX decisions in Slack that make for a good experience aren't present in Discord. Like being able to click on someone's name and go to the dedicated DM view for them.

Discord is the one thing I dislike more than Slack, even if their backend tech is fucking stellar.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#156

Post by ytjohn »

minikites wrote: post #123
TheSwordsman wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

>you can ban people from channels Why not ban them completely and have a private appeal process? How often are people a nuisance in one channel yet valuable in another?

I see your point and it does make sense. But from an IRC perspective, most people/groups only care about a handful of channels. So you might have the #community or #support channel, and someone starts acting up. A channel operator can ban them from that channel directly. Alternatively, a lot of IRC "teams" maintain a bot to manage the channel. The bot can give someone a temporary channel ban (a timeout) based on keywords, or a mod in the channel might type something like "!ban userx because of rule 12" and that bot might ban that user from a list of managed channels.

That user is then still on the server, they can make their own channels or message admins directly. There might be an #ops channel where they can go and plead their case. If they annoy the admins or someone else that reports them to the admins, then they might get a server-wide ban.

A lot of this comes behavior from public irc servers. Channel operators can manage their channel however they desire, and if the users don't like it, they can start their own channel. But for an organization ran IRC server, a server wide ban is more possible. But in the case of say, Mozilla, there are all sorts of different groups running their own channel. So a group working on a mozilla labs project might just start a channel for that project, but not actually have server-ban privileges. So they can moderate their channel and perhaps request a server ban on someone, but that server ban might take hours to approve, or the bad actor might just go away.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#157

Post by TheSwordsman »

znpy wrote: post #143
zapzupnz wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> for the too many people that want to have fun while pretending to communicate It's exactly this kind of flippant dismissal that is why IRC is dying, because there are too many people who equate modernity with frivolity. That is, unless our requirements strictly adhere to your arbitrarily-defined notions of that which has merit, our voices are left unheard. And IRC's greatest defenders wonder why everybody jumps shi…

> a contacts list that travels across sessions, regardless of client Tell me exactly how use slack, directly (without bridges and stuff) without using the official client.

Get your session key that's embedded in the HTML body after you log in. Be careful with this key since it has no expiry and can impersonate you as if you were connected via the default client, including undocumented API access. Find some application that can connect to the Slack RTM API and provide a chat TUI, using the session key you extracted.

I know there are a few out there, but can't personally recommend one.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#158

Post by TheSwordsman »

swiley wrote: post #142
dTal wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its worst problem is the inability to request scrollback from the server. I don't understand why that extension wasn't written, like, 20 years ago. You also need a "de facto official" client that includes a small list of default servers, and big friendly buttons for /JOIN and /PART - in fact the user should not be required to type a /COMMAND at any point.

Yes, I think this is fundamentally the main issue people have with IRC. Some IRC users don’t like the idea of the channel being logged though? That’s the best I can come up with for an argument against it.

I think if you make it clear the channel is logged it's the best you can do, since they can choose to partake in the conversation or not. No forcing function. The downside comes when you've a Netsplit and you lose one side of the conversation.

It does surprise me that some people are supporters of open source, but aren't supporters of open and transparent communication. Seems like a miss.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#159

Post by johncolanduoni »

the8472 wrote: post #147
zapzupnz wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> for the too many people that want to have fun while pretending to communicate It's exactly this kind of flippant dismissal that is why IRC is dying, because there are too many people who equate modernity with frivolity. That is, unless our requirements strictly adhere to your arbitrarily-defined notions of that which has merit, our voices are left unheard. And IRC's greatest defenders wonder why everybody jumps shi…

> - the ability to delete one's own message, and have that deletion propagated > - the ability to delete other peoples' messages, and have that deletion propagated That means you are asking for control over other people's computers and what information they are allowed to display, i.e. DRM. It is also a falsification of history. > - the ability for all participants in the community to see messages in the same format,…

Is it DRM when a moderator deletes a post on a phpBB forum? Or does it only count when it's on Slack?

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#160

Post by TheSwordsman »

sumedh wrote: post #152
xfitm3 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slack is trash and hostile to users, but unfortunately, it has significant momentum. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mozilla switches over.

> Slack is trash and hostile to users It seems better than Skype and Hipchat and whatever Google's latest chat app.

I think we need to be explicit, Slack isn't always conducive to the needs of open communities. Some of its features are extremely friendly to users, like having the possibility of full message history retention and mobile apps. But the former does require you be paid, and the latter is also possible with other solutions.
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