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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)

#231

Post by progval »

hengheng wrote: post #7

At its core, I agree that the bare-bones nature of IRC can be wonderful. But all of the modern services like Teams, Slack and Discord, have seamlessness between client devices as their first priority. People leave their laptop, go to the bathroom, get their phone out and go on typing. I used IRC for a brief period even after we began to have multiple devices. It was always through some kind of proxy, or basically an…

> The whole protocol you would have to build around IRC to achieve client agnosticity would arguably be more complex than IRC itself.

You don't have to build a new protocol. The Ergo IRCd supports multiple clients connecting to the same account (and using the same nick) at the same time using the regular IRC protocol: https://github.com/ergochat/ergo/blob/master/docs/USERGUIDE....

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

#232

Post by mplewis »

soldeace wrote: post #191

> Anyone who has ever used IRC knows that there is nothing even remotely complicated about using it, but the terminology and the steps required to use one are ostensibly terrifying enough to reliably keep the technically illiterate at bay. This remark, topped with the author's piece on "normiefication", is the kind of intellectual elitism that reliably keeps me away from IRC whenever I think of coming back to it.

This person’s view is so insular and so self-centered that they truly seem to believe that IRC is not complicated. This is an excellent illustration of how important it is to stay grounded and connected to your real-world user base.

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

#233

Post by kakwa_ »

kyrofa wrote: post #223

> The reliability and lack of bloat that are inherent to IRC [...] First off, I love IRC and always will. But boy, the author sure must have a stable internet connection. In my experience one blip means a lost message with no indication that it's been lost. That is not my definition of reliable.

This was not a really issue... as long as you had access to a shell on a reliable server to screen+irssi (or tmux+weechat if you felt fancy).

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

#234

Post by progval »

_xivi wrote: post #22

Not receiving a message unless you're online is really the deal breaker for most people

This isn't inherent to IRC; some servers support sending history when you are back online:

* https://github.com/ergochat/ergo/blob/master/docs/USERGUIDE....

* https://docs.inspircd.org/3/modules/chanhistory/

* https://www.unrealircd.org/docs/Channel_history

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

#235

Post by judge2020 »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #219
judge2020 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have permission, nobody has been suspended for using a dedicated discord bot (one where you must be an admin to invite to a server) to run this Discord Chat Exporter, at least based on the GitHub issues/discussions of that repo.

The problem isn’t no one has - it’s that the could be. I can not possibly understand why anyone considers discord to be anything but a company with absolute control of a product.

I don't think anyone believe otherwise. People still choose it because the feature set it provides addresses their needs and makes online chat, voice, and live streaming to friends a wonderful experience.

For 99.9% of users, they don't need to worry about Discord terminating their account or their friends' account. If Discord somehow fumbles this by randomly suspending peoples' accounts for no reason whatsoever, and on such a wide scale that everyone will know a friend affected by this, they'll quickly lose marketshare.

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

#236

Post by eropple »

Zetice wrote: post #210
eropple wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I am well aware it isn't "an app". I was using IRC in about 1997 and stopped in about 2017 because other options that were better suited to my needs, and had the people I wanted to talk to, arose.

The second part of your response isn't helping you move towards the end state you want. If anything, it's going the other way. Product empathy isn't optional--ask yourself: why would I write or fund an IRC client when I have things that work for me already? Like, this is the Linux-on-the-desktop advocacy all over again. "Your thing doesn't work for me because of X [usually literally X on Linux, but you get the idea], but Y does." "Well, expend time or money to fix X!" Why? You're the one who likes X. You're advocating for it. Why would I fix the thing you like when the thing I use already works?

Take the sibling response to yours--I learned something new in seeing https://thelounge.chat, and while I don't want to run software to deal with chat, that was a cool thing to see. I learned something! I'll remember it later!

Contrast that to "do it yourself".

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

#237

Post by progval »

iforgotpassword wrote: post #51
gorgoiler wrote: post #11

We span up a Synapse instance the other day and connected to it with Element on a few different laptops. (This is the Matrix server and client btw — they really need a marketing / branding person!) It was both hellish and amazing. Hellish in that I had absolutely no idea how to use anything. Channels and rooms and stuff. All very complicated and weird. I just wanted a single, default place to hang out! It was also am…

I'd probably switch to Discord before using Matrix as my primary way of communication. It's a clusterfuck held together by duct-tape and ADHS. I try it every now and then and within a couple minutes, I manage to break something, that my Matrix-using friends just shrug off. As an example, just a few days ago I used the web client again and had a chat with a friend. Just for fun, he added a bazillion emoji reactions to…

FWIW, someone identified the issue, and next Monday's update (https://matrix.org/blog/2023/07/postponing-libera-chat-depor...) may include a fix

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

#238

Post by scarygliders »

judge2020 wrote: post #208
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?

In a way, I do.

Which is why I use self-hosted Gitlab ;)

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

#239

Post by eropple »

rascul wrote: post #221
eropple wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

You might check out The Lounge. https://thelounge.chat

Thank you for linking this--this is cool! I'm not in a place where I want to run software to solve the problem of chat, but this looks like a really good One Of Those for those so inclined, and I'm going to keep it in my back pocket for the future.

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

#240

Post by redserk »

TkTech wrote: post #209
redserk wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tot…

Thanks for hosting a service to help host the logs in a public manner.

As far as logs hosting though, this only works for as long as you're willing to host though. It seems unlikely that Discord will disappear overnight -- or if this was a risk, I'd assume they'd be acquired with a large userbase.

I've written IRC and Discord bots and don't think Discord bots aren't much more difficult. One of the best strengths of writing a Discord bot is that if your bot goes down, you can query and fetch lost history fairly easily. This isn't doable in IRC unless you put a bouncer in front of your bot or the server is set up to feed clients with history.

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