11–20 of 136 posts
Funny to see this reposted today, as just today I encountered an open source project which primarily uses Discord for chat - a terrible idea for all the same reasons. I had planned on writing a similar follow-up article reminding people that Discord is a bad communication medium for open source projects, too. I think that this is something the community ought to be occasionally reminded of, lest we lapse.
What's wrong with Discord?
There have been months where the spam on freenode was unbearable, and fundamentally IRC is, like SMTP, a protocol where spammers have the advantage, and only heuristics stop spam. A big part of the value of IRC-replacements are accounts that are tied enough to a person's identity (For example, by requiring sms confirmation) to deter most spam. IRC hasn't been able to do that.
Doesn't IRC support the registration of usernames?
Individual IRC server implementations might, but each implementation seems to be unique in how they handle it (maybe through a website, maybe through NickServ, maybe through AuthServ, maybe through yet another bot name, and login may or may not use the PASS command, etc.), and those implementations frequently have you jumping through brittle hoops to auth that break when you attempt to automate them due to timing issues etc. leaving you manually logging in every time.
Which is probably part of the reason why the IRC servers I can think of generally all allowed messaging without any kind of registration other than connecting and auto-choosing a unique-for-now nickname. IRC moderation then becomes an uncoordinated, individualized, constant game of whack-a-proxy, RBLs, etc.
One of the biggest problems with IRC is that there is no immediately obvious way to jump into a channel and browse or search the history.
Also, because there are so many IRC clients, and so many servers out there, one person's IRC experience can vastly differ from another's.
IRC also doesn't have any of the modern amenities like emoji reactions or reaction gifs, comment threads, code snippets, plug-and-play third party integrations and web hooks, profile pictures, voice/video chat, screen sharing, or any number of a plethora of other features that BOTH Slack and Discord have.
If you want people to use an open source alternative to Slack or Discord, then people need to build that alternative. IRC, unfortunately, is not it (at least not in its current aged state).
Personally, I’m a big fan of MatterMost[0] as its also open source but provides a much more Slack-like experience which new users will be immediately familiar with. You can host it yourself and it works with lots of existing integrations.
[0] - https://mattermost.com/
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doesn't IRC support the registration of usernames?
Most servers do, and a simple channel mode solves the spam problem (which isn't nowhere near as much of a problem as email spam).
If there's a channel mode that can stop that, while still keeping the channel useful for people who need support, I couldn't find it.
Funny to see this reposted today, as just today I encountered an open source project which primarily uses Discord for chat - a terrible idea for all the same reasons. I had planned on writing a similar follow-up article reminding people that Discord is a bad communication medium for open source projects, too. I think that this is something the community ought to be occasionally reminded of, lest we lapse.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most servers do, and a simple channel mode solves the spam problem (which isn't nowhere near as much of a problem as email spam).
I don't believe that it does. For a week or two about a year ago, freenode had a problem where accounts would join channel, spam links to sites accusing prominent people of child porn, and be kicked a moment later. If there's a channel mode that can stop that, while still keeping the channel useful for people who need support, I couldn't find it.
Funny to see this reposted today, as just today I encountered an open source project which primarily uses Discord for chat - a terrible idea for all the same reasons. I had planned on writing a similar follow-up article reminding people that Discord is a bad communication medium for open source projects, too. I think that this is something the community ought to be occasionally reminded of, lest we lapse.
Is mumble[1] a decent replacement for discord? I like the idea of the immediacy of voice chat for talking over ideas and issues. [1]: https://www.mumble.info/