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Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

exple.tive.org

281–290 of 370 posts

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#281
post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla did not move the Rust channels. We did.

It's simply pathetic that the handlers of one of the most important parts of Mozilla unilaterally decided to move the community to a closed source service and Mozilla didn't have teeth to do anything about it.

If Mozilla were able to do that, people would be upset by a company controlling open source. You can’t have it both ways.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sound like you have absolutely no idea. You are greeted by NickServ on connecting with an unregistered nick, asking you to register with your email by sending a standard /msg. You open the email and click the link. I remember doing this for FreeNode at the age of 13. It’s fine.

Then you close your laptop and reopen it and you have to reconnect. Oh, you want it to automatically reconnect? No problem, you can automate identifying yourself to NickServ with a simple command like /NETWORK ADD -autosendcmd "/^msg nickserv ident pass;wait 2000" ExampleNet Oh, a ghost session stopped you connecting as YourName and now you're YourName2 ? No problem, NickServ can kill your ghost session so you can ge…

What’s so complicated about this again? https://i.k8r.eu/Jr-NBg.png

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I haven't seen netsplits since my teens and I'm 36.

they happen regularly on efnet, occasionally on freenode. Presumably they don't occur on mozilla irc since it's a single node?

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#284
post #208
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.

Why even call it "part"? The word everyone's familiar with is "leave". "part" is already an irc jargon.

it is perfectly valid english. E.g. "to part ways".

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#285
Many things mention about other services are still possible with IRC; in some cases by the client side and in some cases by the server side. Server side logging is possible (and I have implemented this once) with IRC. Still, you can make it available with multiple protocols, and you can alter an implementation of a IRC server even if you do not have it available with other protocols too. IRC is also easy to use without any special software.

I currently have a NNTP server set up, but not IRC or any other kind of chat system (but if I do set one up, it will almost certainly be IRC).

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#286
post #141

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 modify one's own messages >- 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 These 1) don’t work when you need them too and 2) are very much antifeatures I’ve been in slack and discourd channels with important people who will post things that cause me to make some decision and then will go b…

I agree that it doesn't work and is antifeatures. I also like that on IRC you can just sent messages and there it is. You can have public logs, possibly server side logs (although as far as I know, implementations of this aren't common, but this is easily possible without altering the protocol or clients at all); private messages would not be logged though, so if you wish to remain private you should send the message private instead (the server administrator should not look at private messages either, unless the message is addressed to them). Messages that you do not like, you can filter out on the client side (if the operator can provide a default filter file for uses who do not want to see everything or to customize it, that could also do; however, (public) messages should probably still be stored except that you do not have unlimited disk space, so you will have to avoid some anyways).

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#287
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…

IRC isn't really anonymous or private. Your IP address is visible to everyone by default.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#288
post #136

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 can't fathom open source projects and communities using slack as a communication platform. I like slack, it's a great product for business, where you can pay $X for each user in your org. However, OS and non-profit communities quickly run into the history issue. There is no way that some of the communities I'm part of on Slack could pay for all the users. For example, the "Maker's Kitchen" slack has 1500-2000 peopl…

I thought IRC didn’t have message history either? I’m not saying Slack is good for open-source communities, but it seems like “not having history” would be the status quo.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#289
post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netsplits happen once in a blue moon nowadays (on freenode at least), nick collisions are also solved (you can register your nick on freenode and other networks), and you can totally set up logging on your channel and unlike Slack it won't disappear after 10,000 messages. You can also make it accessible through the web so people can easily see past history. File transfers are definitely an issue over IRC but https://…

So, what client just allows you to join a channel and scroll up without having to learn the idiosyncrasies of a bot? Now, how do you search every channel on the instance? I'm curious if someone has figured this out in the interm. (My current hope lies in Mattermost, honestly.)

My chat logs are just plain text under ~/.weechat/logs and I search them using rip-grep. Works really fast. I am guessing a nicer interface like IRCCloud or TheLounge can work like Slack for searching, file/snippet hosting etc in a more approachable manner.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#290
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that different from Slack though? Did people use bouncers that don't set /away ?

On slack it shows whether someone is active or away. It also guarantees they'll get the message. You're not praying that you picked the right bouncer to direct your message at and that it's configured to let them know when they get back.

You can easily see if someone is active or not. Most clients even tell you that the user is away.

The other problem you describe is related to it being an open standard. If you had a custom slack client or server you also would not be able to make assumptions about how it works on the remote end.

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