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Why I Live in IRC (2015)

aaronparecki.com

61–70 of 129 posts

Re: Why I Live in IRC (2015)

#62
post #20

No mention was ever made of why anyone would want their life filled with so many damn notifications. Half of these seem more appropriate for email, and email is already set up to handle them with zero configuration (like GitHub). Twitter, who cares, that’s a time waster. Home surveillance stuff is also a waste of time. It is basically entirely ineffective, every petty criminal knows to wear a mask and clearance rates…

> Home surveillance stuff is also a waste of time. It is basically entirely ineffective, every petty criminal knows to wear a mask and clearance rates are below 15%. This is very context-dependent. If I lived in a large city somewhere and was often not at home, sure - but I live in a small town and am almost always home. "Home surveillance stuff" notifies me when something unexpected is happening on my property and l…

Exactly. Even in a relatively dense location, I have a new automation that runs when my cameras detect a person, both blaring a siren outside as well as notifying me in the house. Now about half a dozen times, it has stopped someone from getting farther than a few feet on the property, whereas without it I had people sneaking around looking for unlocked doors.

Re: Why I Live in IRC (2015)

#63
post #14

I was an ircop on efnet for like half my childhood until they figured out I wasn't 18 and desynced my server. I just could never go back to IRC. I stopped using it probably 15 years ago or more after using it for 20ish years. Got my first job on it, learned linux and networking through it, definitely propelled my career. TOO many bots log entire channels out to public html sites. This is prevalent in everything like…

You hit the nail on the head when it comes to why people don't use IRC anymore. Missing messages because you're not online is simply unacceptable to today's audience, and running a bouncer is too technical for most folks. Using a shared bouncer like IRCCloud isn't feasible since they get abused and the entire provider often gets banned. I still use IRC (For nearly 30 years now!) and am in a channel that is still high…

There’s client addons to log all messages (even highlighting deleted and edited ones) and chat exporters literally anyone can run, mod bots that log every deleted and edited message to special channels, and probably more with Discord too.

(also don’t forget umode +x and vhosts/cloaks exist on most competent networks to hide your IP/hostname)

Re: Why I Live in IRC (2015)

#65
post #46
post #14

I was an ircop on efnet for like half my childhood until they figured out I wasn't 18 and desynced my server. I just could never go back to IRC. I stopped using it probably 15 years ago or more after using it for 20ish years. Got my first job on it, learned linux and networking through it, definitely propelled my career. TOO many bots log entire channels out to public html sites. This is prevalent in everything like…

Am I the only one who thinks that many of the listed gripes are core features? > TOO many bots log entire channels out to public html sites. Fair enough. This would be a likely problem with any non-private chat system. > It won't preview gifs Why would I want my client to preload arbitrary third-party supplied fourth-party content? No thank you. > No syncing without running an eggdrop or some tty somewhere running it…

You are not the only one!

Re: Why I Live in IRC (2015)

#66
post #30
post #10

I still live there. Rizon and Libera baby!

One of the weirdest irc networks I've seen is a rizon adjacent one, irc.sageru.org - its basic premise is forced anonymity implemented serverside. It's a bit slow. It's not an entirely beautiful place. But it's a fun idea, at its core.

Thanks. Will be checking that out asap.

Re: Why I Live in IRC (2015)

#67
post #46
post #14

I was an ircop on efnet for like half my childhood until they figured out I wasn't 18 and desynced my server. I just could never go back to IRC. I stopped using it probably 15 years ago or more after using it for 20ish years. Got my first job on it, learned linux and networking through it, definitely propelled my career. TOO many bots log entire channels out to public html sites. This is prevalent in everything like…

Am I the only one who thinks that many of the listed gripes are core features? > TOO many bots log entire channels out to public html sites. Fair enough. This would be a likely problem with any non-private chat system. > It won't preview gifs Why would I want my client to preload arbitrary third-party supplied fourth-party content? No thank you. > No syncing without running an eggdrop or some tty somewhere running it…

> Fair enough. This would be a likely problem with any non-private chat system.

No, because most non-private chat systems don't oblige anyone who wants to participate seriously to run a log bot. Of course any chat could be being logged, but most people don't bother if you don't give them a reason to.

> Why would I want my client to preload arbitrary third-party supplied fourth-party content?

The whole point of being in a public chat is exposing yourself to arbitrary third-party content. Why would you want to read a message from someone you don't trust enough to load a gif from?

> Screen and tmux have been table stakes for decades. If you can not sustain a 400h idle, you're doing it wrong.

"It was hard for me, so it should be hard for you too." And IRC fans wonder why the younger generation don't want to use it.

> Which one do you want? Anonymity or privacy? I don't see how this is in any way different than our current-day antisocial networks.

People generally want persistent pseudononymity with some kind of reputation/integrity. When you DM someone on Twitter/Instagram/Reddit (or indeed on a phpBB-style forum), you don't have to show them your driving license, but you're reasonably confident they're the same person you were DMing yesterday. For most people that's a better tradeoff than IRC's "they could be anyone who's chosen to call themselves that, lol, good luck". Heck, HN accounts are the same kind of thing (whereas IRC is more akin to 4chan).

Re: Why I Live in IRC (2015)

#68
post #59

Surprised no one even mentioned the matrix protocol yet. Its still very rough around the edges, but for an old school IRC person talk of Discord as an alternative just hurts me. Do I want my community to be completely owned by a corporation, so that all the work we put into the network effect belongs to a company and they can impose/change rules at any moment? Have we learned nothing? Matrix is the modern IRC alterna…

>Matrix is the modern IRC alternative, not discord. But simultaneously Matrix is not a good enough Discord alternative. Too much friction, too many issues, and still difficult for non-technical users. The reason Discord won out is you can just send a link to somebody and they're already on-boarded.

Even Discord is too hard for non-technical people. My attempt at a family server has dozens of stale accounts belonging to my parents. As much as it infuriates me, I now understand why WhatsApp is phone-only.

Re: Why I Live in IRC (2015)

#69
post #34
post #26

[flagged]

Counter-example experience: At some point I tried to find an active community to discuss Electrical Engineering. I sampled 8-9 Discords, and they were all dead and all had redundant #general and #offtopic channels. ##electronics on Libera otoh is highly active. Discord sucks because it's way too fragmented and diluted.

Discord is fragmented and diluted because it's the only way to survive (other than by being small enough to be irrelevant, as IRC does). Using any social system that isn't fragmented and diluted for anything other than bland pleasantries carries too much risk of becoming today's "twitter main character".

Re: Why I Live in IRC (2015)

#70
post #14

I was an ircop on efnet for like half my childhood until they figured out I wasn't 18 and desynced my server. I just could never go back to IRC. I stopped using it probably 15 years ago or more after using it for 20ish years. Got my first job on it, learned linux and networking through it, definitely propelled my career. TOO many bots log entire channels out to public html sites. This is prevalent in everything like…

> TOO many bots log entire channels out to public html sites.

Don't expect privacy in public.

> NO features.

Thank god.

> No syncing

Conversation should be ephemeral. If you want an audit trail use email.

I also use ircs/ircx on plan 9 where the server portion, ircs, runs on my cpu server and I can connect from anywhere and open the ircx chat clients which are just rc scripts in windows.

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