I know IRC still exists and there's a lot of people there, but for some reason I don't feel like it is the same ~vibe~ as when I used to use it growing up in the 90s
Ask HN: Do You Miss IRC?
1–10 of 109 posts
Re: Ask HN: Do You Miss IRC?
#2I miss the culture that came with small distributed IRC networks. I miss the technical people that chose to use the networks. Those people moved to where they could reach more of their friends and family members.
I do not miss patching the IRC servers and upgrading / rewriting configurations (Unreal IRCD 2.x 3.x 4.x and now 5.x) and Anope services. Certainly not when we went from thousands, to hundreds, to dozens of users. Too much work for too few people making use of it.
Re: Ask HN: Do You Miss IRC?
#3I miss the feeling you had using it and the fun bots people made in some channels. I do not miss the difficulty of getting less technical users onto it and it's lack of portability with out some work. New tools these days make the portability aspect easy and barrier to entry low for less technical users which expands the user base of a lot of platforms today.
Re: Ask HN: Do You Miss IRC?
#4twitter took that "vibe" and Eternal September-ed the idea for many people. IRC was already suffering from "if you're not from the right network you're nobody" and fragmentation of user experience with services etc; which didn't help either.
When I reminisce about IRC im usually thinking about the few channels I actually used, which were in my case smaller groups of geek tangentially spawned from a larger channel (everybody met on #slashdot but had other channels for real discussion). That kind of small group text chat is doable on discord now.
Re: Ask HN: Do You Miss IRC?
#5This experience still exists, but you have to find smaller channels where people come to know one another as regulars. The smaller networks and channels still exist and they have a good community vibe.
Of course, it's hard to find out about these channels. IME it takes time to find the small channels (or the small networks, there are many networks tiny enough for nobody to know about unless they've been invited). Try starting with a large channel and eventually you'll find out about smaller and smaller channels. Some larger projects on Freenode are also big enough to have -offtopic channels, which can easily become their own communities.
Keep in mind that a 24/7 connection is basically essential, get a bouncer or use something like IRCCloud.
Re: Ask HN: Do You Miss IRC?
#6Yes
Re: Ask HN: Do You Miss IRC?
#7no; i’m logged in right now!
Re: Ask HN: Do You Miss IRC?
#8Nope.
I'm still using it for my day to day. ;-)
Though I'm no longer on the traditional large help channels on freenode (or dalnet before it ) to be fair.
Re: Ask HN: Do You Miss IRC?
#9Sure do. Back then, there weren't a ton of networks, so it was easy to find great channels. I gained my social net via IRC.
Today, it seems most of the user interaction has migrated to a ton of commercial social networks.
Re: Ask HN: Do You Miss IRC?
#10The community? Sure.
The chat standard? Not in the least.