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Leaving irc.perl.org

sungo.wtf

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Re: Leaving irc.perl.org

#11

Post by simias »

CalRobert wrote: post #5
simias wrote: post #3

Both Perl and IRC have suffered heavily from a massive loss of popularity over the past decade, I can't say I'm too surprised that irc.perl.org is going the way of the dodo. I really like IRC and I'm really sorry to see it go, and I still have an irssi running full time on a handful of servers. Freenode is basically the only server that manages to maintain its user base, but even for them it's not really growing anym…

I've been trying to get back to IRC, but the clients seem dated for the most part. Do you have recommendations for something with a UI that feels reasonably modern?

Not really, I'm generally fine with "dated". I use irssi with a config file that hasn't change in a decade.

Not that I think that you're wrong for wanting a more modern experience, it's clearly one of the main reasons IRC is losing traction. Some things can be solved client-side by, for instance, auto-fetching some URLs to display image links inline (although it could cause privacy concerns) but you also have limitations caused by the IRC protocol itself.

For instance IRC has no notion of "replies", if you want to quote somebody you generally copy/paste their comment and put your reply at the end. That's clearly primitive and makes it hard to find the original context.

Re: Leaving irc.perl.org

#12

Post by xPaw »

CalRobert wrote: post #5
simias wrote: post #3

Both Perl and IRC have suffered heavily from a massive loss of popularity over the past decade, I can't say I'm too surprised that irc.perl.org is going the way of the dodo. I really like IRC and I'm really sorry to see it go, and I still have an irssi running full time on a handful of servers. Freenode is basically the only server that manages to maintain its user base, but even for them it's not really growing anym…

I've been trying to get back to IRC, but the clients seem dated for the most part. Do you have recommendations for something with a UI that feels reasonably modern?

The Lounge (https://thelounge.chat/) would be a good choice

Re: Leaving irc.perl.org

#13

Post by FineTralfazz »

CalRobert wrote: post #5
simias wrote: post #3

Both Perl and IRC have suffered heavily from a massive loss of popularity over the past decade, I can't say I'm too surprised that irc.perl.org is going the way of the dodo. I really like IRC and I'm really sorry to see it go, and I still have an irssi running full time on a handful of servers. Freenode is basically the only server that manages to maintain its user base, but even for them it's not really growing anym…

I've been trying to get back to IRC, but the clients seem dated for the most part. Do you have recommendations for something with a UI that feels reasonably modern?

I haven't personally tried it, but I've seen other people here recommend The Lounge on past threads: https://thelounge.chat

Re: Leaving irc.perl.org

#14

Post by flxy »

simias wrote: post #3

Both Perl and IRC have suffered heavily from a massive loss of popularity over the past decade, I can't say I'm too surprised that irc.perl.org is going the way of the dodo. I really like IRC and I'm really sorry to see it go, and I still have an irssi running full time on a handful of servers. Freenode is basically the only server that manages to maintain its user base, but even for them it's not really growing anym…

As a techy person in their mid twenties, I've used irc extensively over the years and I miss it quite a bit. It doesn't have all the fancy features of modern messaging solutions because it was focused on the thing that actually mattered: conversations with others. These days when I look at the discord servers I'm in, a lot of it is just sharing images, spamming emotes and other silly things. Actual conversations are fairly rare. We had used irc at work as well for internal chatting. But after a while we switched to a paid, proprietary solution and the experience with that was honestly a lot worse. It seemed more businessy and that had an effect on how people used the service as well. There was a lot of informal, fun talk on irc but it turned fairly serious when we switched. I kind of hope that irc will somehow see a resurrection of sorts. It's not dead, but it's slowly fading for sure.

Re: Leaving irc.perl.org

#15

Post by jrockway »

simias wrote: post #11
CalRobert wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been trying to get back to IRC, but the clients seem dated for the most part. Do you have recommendations for something with a UI that feels reasonably modern?

Not really, I'm generally fine with "dated". I use irssi with a config file that hasn't change in a decade. Not that I think that you're wrong for wanting a more modern experience, it's clearly one of the main reasons IRC is losing traction. Some things can be solved client-side by, for instance, auto-fetching some URLs to display image links inline (although it could cause privacy concerns) but you also have limitat…

> That's clearly primitive and makes it hard to find the original context.

Maybe. I am positive I miss 99% of replies (in "threads") in Slack. I always felt like the feature is designed for the case where you've already decided something, but people want to show up and bikeshed it, so they get a little area that nobody can see where they do that. Maybe that's not what it's meant for. But when I want to reply to someone, I say "@whoever, regarding foo that you were talking about earlier..." I think this is the IRC way of handling that and it seems correct to me. The reality is, sometimes you've missed your window to contribute to a conversation. No tool is going to change that.

Re: Leaving irc.perl.org

#16

Post by Crinus »

flxy wrote: post #14
simias wrote: post #3

Both Perl and IRC have suffered heavily from a massive loss of popularity over the past decade, I can't say I'm too surprised that irc.perl.org is going the way of the dodo. I really like IRC and I'm really sorry to see it go, and I still have an irssi running full time on a handful of servers. Freenode is basically the only server that manages to maintain its user base, but even for them it's not really growing anym…

As a techy person in their mid twenties, I've used irc extensively over the years and I miss it quite a bit. It doesn't have all the fancy features of modern messaging solutions because it was focused on the thing that actually mattered: conversations with others. These days when I look at the discord servers I'm in, a lot of it is just sharing images, spamming emotes and other silly things. Actual conversations are…

> Actual conversations are fairly rare.

FWIW this is exactly my experience with pretty much every single IRC server and channel i've been the last 15 years or so. It used to be more... chatty before that, but over time people just join and idle.

I wonder if the ability to have IRCs running all the time actually harmed IRC since at the past (90s mainly and perhaps very early 2000s) if someone was in a channel, they'd be up for chatting too whereas now channels are full of "zombies".

Or it might just be a coincidence.

Re: Leaving irc.perl.org

#17

Post by Crinus »

em-bee wrote: post #9
dijit wrote: post #7

if sungo is reading this: I'm happy to take over or help the new opers. I've got some experience in IRC administration (Myself being in a similar position as sungo in a similar sized network). The centralisation of IRC to places like OFTC and Freenode leads people to think that all IRC networks are similar to those, I'd rather help keep it more spread if possible. That said, I'm sad to see another IRC operator burn o…

curious, why do you think separate irc networks is worthwhile? if they are FOSS community then they should be all the same. of course, different channels, and different people, but all with the same shared ideals...

What if the people work on FOSS but do not share the same ideals?

Re: Leaving irc.perl.org

#18

Post by toyg »

em-bee wrote: post #9
dijit wrote: post #7

if sungo is reading this: I'm happy to take over or help the new opers. I've got some experience in IRC administration (Myself being in a similar position as sungo in a similar sized network). The centralisation of IRC to places like OFTC and Freenode leads people to think that all IRC networks are similar to those, I'd rather help keep it more spread if possible. That said, I'm sad to see another IRC operator burn o…

curious, why do you think separate irc networks is worthwhile? if they are FOSS community then they should be all the same. of course, different channels, and different people, but all with the same shared ideals...

I think parent is worried about centralisation becoming a single point of failure. If IRC becomes entirely synonymous with Freenode, as soon as Freenode dies then the whole IRC dies as well. It’s a bit like Google Reader kinda killed mainstream RSS usage by centralizing it and then collapsing.
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