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Happy Birthday, Libera Chat

libera.chat

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Re: Happy Birthday, Libera Chat

#111

Post by dark-star »

someotherperson wrote: post #25

I think Freenode helped serve as a lesson to rasengan on a few things: 1. Technical prowess doesn't supersede the value of interpersonal/social abilities 2. Money doesn't let you control the narrative in a free system 3. Elon Musk isn't Elon Musk because he's rich, he's Elon Musk because he's good at marketing 4. Reputation is everything It's a shame that the cost of these lessons was the destruction of Freenode and…

You assume that resangan wanted to continue running FreeNode the way it was.

To me it looks like he had some issues with the people behind FreeNode and decided to take it over simply to destroy it (and/or change it into the right-wing gaslighting pro-trump "community" that it is now). If you look at it this way, it all makes sense: It's all just a personal vendetta project for him

Re: Happy Birthday, Libera Chat

#112

Post by itchyjunk »

iforgotpassword wrote: post #5
LeoPanthera wrote: post #2

The fact that this doesn't even mention Freenode is hilarious, and so awkward. Whoever wrote this had to really go out of their way to construct a history that isn't technically wrong, but, if you didn't know that Libera got its start as a fork of Freenode that almost everyone wanted to leave as soon as possible, you'd never figure it out.

Do we have any reliable info on how freenode is even doing today? At least some accurate user counts? Who is using it? When the Exodus started, it seemed to turn into some right wing cesspool, but that was also more hearsay iirc.

It seems to be alive. My client still connects to it. I saw a lot of trolling that seems to have simmered down now. I have had some odd/interesting conversations in the #freenode channel. 417 users in the channel at the time of this writing.

Re: Happy Birthday, Libera Chat

#113

Post by radarsat1 »

myself248 wrote: post #107
radarsat1 wrote: post #41

Can people explain what they like about IRC? I've often found the idea of having a community chat around some topic quite intriguing, but in practice when I've tried briefly joining such communities, I simply don't last long, as it doesn't grab my attention. Rooms tend to have tens or a hundred people joined, but saying nothing, until someone has a problem they want to talk about or question they want to ask, which i…

I share your observations, which apply to a lot of topic-focused channels. I think they don't apply to the freewheeling chat channels. In those, a totally different set of social norms apply, and one that may be counterintuitive is that, to get a conversation going, you shouldn't try to be _too_ provocative to get attention. Reason being that you may be dismissed as a troll not worthy of feeding. There's a balance to…

I see, interesting perspective thanks. Your tip about capturing the conversations to catch up later is a nice idea.

Re: Happy Birthday, Libera Chat

#114

Post by itchyjunk »

radarsat1 wrote: post #41

Can people explain what they like about IRC? I've often found the idea of having a community chat around some topic quite intriguing, but in practice when I've tried briefly joining such communities, I simply don't last long, as it doesn't grab my attention. Rooms tend to have tens or a hundred people joined, but saying nothing, until someone has a problem they want to talk about or question they want to ask, which i…

Getting a hang of irc does take time, imho. It's not something you actively look at and interact. Rather it's something I look at occasionally and interact with. I think this style of irc'ing has made it ideal for me. Once you get more used to specific servers/channels, you tend to have different types of engagement. In my experience, a lot of new users come in hoping for this type of more personal/involved discussion from the get go and get disappointed quite a bit.

There are also different types of channels. I only talk in technical channels like #ubuntu when I need help. No point introducing noise. But I might have a monologue about some petty stuff in ##math-offtopic, for example.

Re: Happy Birthday, Libera Chat

#115

Post by coldpie »

radarsat1 wrote: post #41

Can people explain what they like about IRC? I've often found the idea of having a community chat around some topic quite intriguing, but in practice when I've tried briefly joining such communities, I simply don't last long, as it doesn't grab my attention. Rooms tend to have tens or a hundred people joined, but saying nothing, until someone has a problem they want to talk about or question they want to ask, which i…

No in-line images. No animated GIFs. No reactions. No cutesy junk that wiggles and tells me jokes. Lack of those features keeps users who want those things away.

Re: Happy Birthday, Libera Chat

#116

Post by ivberrOg »

FoxbrushTailwag wrote: post #79
stavros wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that history is in your favor (and so does everyone else who moved to Libera), which is why it was a bit odd to not see Freenode mentioned at all. It's nothing bad, it was just a bit "hmm, I wonder why they did that".

It seems to have confused some people, we also got some remarks in that direction on IRC and on Mastodon. I hope my answer cleared it up a bit.

just leaving out the "from scratch" bit would probably have killed any confusion. happy to be a libera user regardless, thanks.

Re: Happy Birthday, Libera Chat

#117

Post by [deleted] »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #2

The fact that this doesn't even mention Freenode is hilarious, and so awkward. Whoever wrote this had to really go out of their way to construct a history that isn't technically wrong, but, if you didn't know that Libera got its start as a fork of Freenode that almost everyone wanted to leave as soon as possible, you'd never figure it out.

[deleted]

Re: Happy Birthday, Libera Chat

#118

Post by beebeepka »

nickdothutton wrote: post #65

One of the biggest selling points of IRC is that large numbers of people are not on it, and will never be on it.

I stopped actively using IRC about 15 years ago precisely because regular (for the time) people gradually disappeared.

I've stuck with too many dying communities.

Re: Happy Birthday, Libera Chat

#119

Post by 1propionyl »

RL_Quine wrote: post #6
iforgotpassword wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we have any reliable info on how freenode is even doing today? At least some accurate user counts? Who is using it? When the Exodus started, it seemed to turn into some right wing cesspool, but that was also more hearsay iirc.

It's had a bunch of guises as a website. For a while it was a blog filled with shouting about how removing the administrators will allow for real Free Speech and the future of everything will be freenode (and cryptocurrency, please buy our shitcoin maybe). https://web.archive.org/web/20210912070004/https://freenode.... It was turned into a Free Speech reddit clone for a bit, which nobody used. https://web.archive.org…

Someone was editing that wiki, but to be clear Pissnet is not affiliated with Freenode, though it was born from its collapse. It is a small but active community, and has a couple hundred servers.

https://shitposting.space/network

It's very hard to explain, but it is a real network that currently operates as an anarchic sandbox for doing weird things with IRC software/protocols and just generally goofing around.

Pretty much every single active user is a netadmin. It's the network where you register a nick by linking your own server.

Re: Happy Birthday, Libera Chat

#120

Post by endorphine »

coldpie wrote: post #115
radarsat1 wrote: post #41

Can people explain what they like about IRC? I've often found the idea of having a community chat around some topic quite intriguing, but in practice when I've tried briefly joining such communities, I simply don't last long, as it doesn't grab my attention. Rooms tend to have tens or a hundred people joined, but saying nothing, until someone has a problem they want to talk about or question they want to ask, which i…

No in-line images. No animated GIFs. No reactions. No cutesy junk that wiggles and tells me jokes. Lack of those features keeps users who want those things away.

After using Slack, Discord and JS build tools that fill the terminal with emojis (half joking here), joining some IRC channels from a lightweight Linux client (looking at you, Electron) felt amazingly refreshing.

Plus it woke up some nostalgic feelings back from when I was first discovering the internet (circa 2000).

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