Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

exple.tive.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 370 posts

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#221

Post by ori_b »

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?

Generally, channels are independently moderated. The moderation is done by someone in the channel, often just the person who started the channel.

The distributed moderation works well with large networks, because the people doing the moderation are in the channel reading it and keeping up with the conversation.

However, because the bar for becoming a channel operator is low, it's not a good idea to give full ban access to them.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#222

Post by ori_b »

larkeith wrote: post #26
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.

I've not used it myself, but have you looked into Matrix?

Yes

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#223

Post by theclaw »

swalladge wrote: post #145
norswap wrote: post #140

I never see addressed the biggest reason (according to me) why IRC loses, so let's spell it out. IRC isn't persistent (i.e. you can't read messages delivered while you were offline) unless you setup an IRC shell. This is technically difficult (much more so than dicking with nickservs and so, which is already a pain point). Hosting it is also not free . Count 5$/month on CloudOcean or some such. https://www.irccloud.c…

I wonder how much work it would be to extend the IRC protocol and popular implementations to include some sort of persistence. It's such a shame that a simple, open, accessible protocol for communication is being lost simply because of this and that it's "too difficult".

Very simple - the server can push to the client when joining a channel. This would require the channel to be logged server-side and that the user authenticates with nickserv before joining channels. It does not need client-side changes so you could still use any client.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#224

Post by varjag »

xena wrote: post #126
joepie91_ wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> having a distributed network architecture and fewer ways to verify users You have exactly as many ways to verify users as are implemented in your NickServ, and pretty much every snazzy web-y proprietary chat platform has a "distributed network architecture" as well. IRC has plenty of real problems, but your particular list of arguments seems completely irrelevant.

NickServ is not typically required for IRC usage.

If your network is large enough to have spam and identity issues, you have nickserv.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#225

Post by edoceo »

edoceo wrote: post #213
garaetjjte wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It lacks administration features - kicking, banning, etc.

Has to self script, it's all packed in a PostgreSQL database - you can do anything you want!!

Near immediate down-vote? Right, forgot that admin of IRC was no cost at all.

Mattermost costs $60/yr in hosting and only a few hours a month in admin work - same as our email group and our old Slack (or whichever solution)

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#226

Post by varjag »

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…

The change is generational. New kids grew up on Discord and Slack, it's what they are going to use.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#227

Post by TheSwordsman »

sk5t wrote: post #212
carbocation wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the user side of things, I work at a large academic institution where I occasionally get unwanted contact (overly invasive, won’t stop messaging even when asked). I totally get that at an office workspace, the solution here is HR. But this is a loosely federated place, and even in my own opinion the conduct doesn’t merit such a response. I just want to be able to mute people.

Slack's refusal to add a "block user" option is beyond frustrating. Short of the nuclear option of disabling the account, there is no way to prevent a bad actor from pestering you. Yet this condition seems to be a deliberate choice of Slack's.

Because Slack's product assumes you have an HR department, and that's an HR issue.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#228

Post by OrgNet »

norswap wrote: post #140

I never see addressed the biggest reason (according to me) why IRC loses, so let's spell it out. IRC isn't persistent (i.e. you can't read messages delivered while you were offline) unless you setup an IRC shell. This is technically difficult (much more so than dicking with nickservs and so, which is already a pain point). Hosting it is also not free . Count 5$/month on CloudOcean or some such. https://www.irccloud.c…

It might not be persistent by default, but there is a lot of its content that is being logged and made available on the web...

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#229

Post by mrweasel »

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 seriously doubt that both harassment and spam is a much of a problem as Mozilla, or others make it out to be. That's not to say that it's not a huge issue for a subset of people and it should be dealt with, to some extend.

If someone want to harass you online, they will find a way, regardless of what governance or censorship you put in place.

Post reply on HN