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IRC is the only viable chat protocol (2022)

koshka.love

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Re: IRC is the only viable chat protocol (2022)

#201

Post by eropple »

Zetice wrote: post #180
pmoriarty wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discord has shitty logging and log-search capabilities. Discord's logging is shitty because: 1 - The logs aren't yours, they're Discord's. If you get banned from the server, your server shuts down, or Discord bans you altogether your access to those logs is gone forever. 2 - Unlike the logs of some IRC channels, Discord's logs aren't available on the web anywhere, so they can't be indexed or searched outside of Disco…

Literally all of your concerns are 100% solved by adding a log bot to the channels you care about, both on IRC and Discord. I’m beyond sick of the helplessness performative shtick around Discord. This is an ancient problem with obvious solutions. Do better.

You're right, this is a solved problem. On the other hand, mobile access on IRC not being unpleasant isn't and won't be, though, so the search for something better for users will continue.

(To their credit, IRCCloud tries. They are the best swing at it I've seen. They aren't Slack-good, let alone Discord-good. The search continues.)

Re: IRC is the only viable chat protocol (2022)

#202

Post by eropple »

kmfrk wrote: post #149
pmoriarty wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discord has shitty logging and log-search capabilities. Discord's logging is shitty because: 1 - The logs aren't yours, they're Discord's. If you get banned from the server, your server shuts down, or Discord bans you altogether your access to those logs is gone forever. 2 - Unlike the logs of some IRC channels, Discord's logs aren't available on the web anywhere, so they can't be indexed or searched outside of Disco…

The thing that's driven me crazy about Discord since its launch is how bad its read position logging is compared to the service they copied (Slack). I don't know how you catch up on any conversation regularly, especially in a work environment.

I don't think any Discord server I'm in expects people to pay particular attention to the history of the server--the affordances are for chatting, not working. They've done some pivoting to add work-responsive features, but it's a WoW guild chat room at its heart.

Re: IRC is the only viable chat protocol (2022)

#203

Post by judge2020 »

kmfrk wrote: post #149
pmoriarty wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discord has shitty logging and log-search capabilities. Discord's logging is shitty because: 1 - The logs aren't yours, they're Discord's. If you get banned from the server, your server shuts down, or Discord bans you altogether your access to those logs is gone forever. 2 - Unlike the logs of some IRC channels, Discord's logs aren't available on the web anywhere, so they can't be indexed or searched outside of Disco…

The thing that's driven me crazy about Discord since its launch is how bad its read position logging is compared to the service they copied (Slack). I don't know how you catch up on any conversation regularly, especially in a work environment.

They added threads recently (within the last 2 years), so your server can emphasise using threads when appropriate, but the channels are much more focused on IRC-style message chat, not thread-based siloed conversations.

Re: IRC is the only viable chat protocol (2022)

#204

Post by eropple »

ungamedplayer wrote: post #120
cout wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling search unusable is hyperbole. I've used search on discord many times to find a discussion from the past.

Some people have higher expectations and needs than single word matching.

Discord does support other search features. It would be nice to have a wildcard search, for sure--but, in my experience, even on busy and large servers I very rarely can't narrow something down to what I was looking for with `from` and `in` along with not-just-single-keyword matching.

But also, it's chat, so I don't really care if on the once-per-month I use the search I have to think about it for a second, because all the other stuff is there and it's good.

Re: IRC is the only viable chat protocol (2022)

#205

Post by judge2020 »

mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #102
tester756 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let's start with one account between all servers. Go ahead and create 1 account per 1 server, nothing prevents you. I've actually been doing it for some time - school (1 server) & private discord account (like 10 servers). >And one censoring authority. Sure, that's valid concern, I respect it. For me it's a trade off.

Actually, if a previous account happened to have a phone number attached, and you're asked for one again when making a second account, then provide the same number, Discord will automatically ban both accounts with no way to appeal. Which happened to me because I apparently had an old account I had forgotten about. So now I need a new phone number if I want to use Discord.

> Actually, if a previous account happened to have a phone number attached, and you're asked for one again when making a second account, then provide the same number, Discord will automatically ban both accounts with no way to appeal.

You left out that it just bans you on any servers that you're already banned on.

It doesn't deactivate/suspend your entire discord account for trying to reuse a phone number for servers that require verification.

Re: IRC is the only viable chat protocol (2022)

#206

Post by eropple »

j45 wrote: post #142
hoyd wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To preserve logs, I would ssh into a screen on a server that was connected.

It’s nice when simple solutions just work.

That sure is a simple solution! As a side effect, it filters out almost all of the people I actually want to talk to in my day-to-day life.

The inability for partisans of particular technologies to understand that affordances matter more than the technologist's spherical-cow notion of "better" continues apace. And I have some empathy for that viewpoint, too, but I grew out of it as a teenager and I always find it odd that others stuck to it.

If you can't meet people where they want to be, your solution might be simple but your solution isn't good for them and fulminating about it just isn't great.

Re: IRC is the only viable chat protocol (2022)

#207

Post by judge2020 »

the_gipsy wrote: post #179
tester756 wrote: post #16

Discord haters look, it is simple. Until Discord appeared we had Ventrilo, Mumble, TeamSpeak, Skype, etc, etc I've been using those for like 10 years almost everyday They had voice chat, some had viable text chat, etc, etc. And then Discord appeared which had: Voice Chat, Good text chat (images, code snippets, emojis, reactions, etc) Streaming Video (!!) File share Robust bot integration Lack of security problem unli…

> Push to talk Isn't that solveable on the OS level? I have a global mic mute toggle hotkey, this could be done on keydown/keyup too.

It being apart of the app is what makes it intuitive. Most people don't want to have to go through setting something like that up at the OS level.

Re: IRC is the only viable chat protocol (2022)

#208

Post by judge2020 »

scarygliders wrote: post #78

I've been on IRC since the 90's and was an Op for Undernet #Linux & #Japan for many years, used to run an IRC server for a small IRC network back in my London days, and also ran a server for the same little network in my Japan days... The article was excellent, however, it made no mention of Matrix. Matrix, like IRC, is decentralised. You can run your own homeserver - just like running an ircd. Connecting to a Matrix…

Do you have the same opinion on GitHub, a completely closed source Git frontend where 99% of OSS code lives?

Re: IRC is the only viable chat protocol (2022)

#209

Post by TkTech »

redserk wrote: post #109
pmoriarty wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discord has shitty logging and log-search capabilities. Discord's logging is shitty because: 1 - The logs aren't yours, they're Discord's. If you get banned from the server, your server shuts down, or Discord bans you altogether your access to those logs is gone forever. 2 - Unlike the logs of some IRC channels, Discord's logs aren't available on the web anywhere, so they can't be indexed or searched outside of Disco…

Let’s not suggest IRC logs are much better. Individual clients may be able to log but say you just join a project channel with years of discussion — you’d have literally nothing to start with. Discord gives you a chance at searching old history with zero additional setup if the permissions allow. For both IRC and Discord you’d need to run a bot to have truly open logs online.

I've just started adding logs to notifico (ex: https://n.tkte.ch/c/1/2023-07-28), which is very barebones. Don't get much time to work on it, but I'm working on implementing search in a cost-effective manner. If the ~3000 IRC channels that use Notifico opt-in to logging they'll get it for free permanently, and I'll be offering nightly dumps to an SFTP server of your choice to make sure there's no lock-in.

You're totally right that you need a bot to have open logs online, I'm just trying to point out that a huge number of open source projects (CPython, FreeBSD, Haiku, Quotebrowser, random NASA weather balloons, thousands of others) already use a common bot so it's not that hard of a problem. The bigger problem is political, in that most IRC network discourage logging, and many communities are outright hostile to it.

Notifico discards PRIVMSG's immediately and the rest of its logs after a couple of hours normally, but in its last decade of operating it's seen more than 2 billion messages to give you an idea of how much has to get indexed.

Also, writing your own bot for IRC is trivial, and has no TOS, complicated APIs, OAuth flows, or other barriers to entry. Can absolutely do the same for Discord but they've already been making changes to make it more difficult to log or export your data.

Re: IRC is the only viable chat protocol (2022)

#210

Post by Zetice »

eropple wrote: post #201
Zetice wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally all of your concerns are 100% solved by adding a log bot to the channels you care about, both on IRC and Discord. I’m beyond sick of the helplessness performative shtick around Discord. This is an ancient problem with obvious solutions. Do better.

You're right, this is a solved problem. On the other hand, mobile access on IRC not being unpleasant isn't and won't be, though, so the search for something better for users will continue. (To their credit, IRCCloud tries. They are the best swing at it I've seen. They aren't Slack-good, let alone Discord-good. The search continues.)

IRC isn’t an app, it’s a protocol. If you don’t like IRC clients as they exist, write or fund one of your own.
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