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Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

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Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#141

Post by swiley »

zapzupnz wrote: post #110
astrobe_ wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IRC has gigatons of clients because it is an open protocol. Some clients are even shareware/commercial. Same goes for servers and server admin interfaces. IRC may have its shortcomings, but its worst defect, for the too many people that want to have fun while pretending to communicate, is that it is not "modern".

> for the too many people that want to have fun while pretending to communicate It's exactly this kind of flippant dismissal that is why IRC is dying, because there are too many people who equate modernity with frivolity. That is, unless our requirements strictly adhere to your arbitrarily-defined notions of that which has merit, our voices are left unheard. And IRC's greatest defenders wonder why everybody jumps shi…

>the ability to modify one's own messages

>- the ability to delete one's own message, and have that deletion propagated

> - the ability to delete other peoples' messages, and have that deletion propagated

These 1) don’t work when you need them too and 2) are very much antifeatures

I’ve been in slack and discourd channels with important people who will post things that cause me to make some decision and then will go back and delete or edit their message. It’s gotten to the point where whenever these people post to slack I always take a screenshot. On discourd you can just use finch and all the edits show up as new messages.

I really liked how on IRC you just sent messages and that was the end of it.

>- everything just working

Hah, that would describe IRC better than discourd IMO. Slack “works” but good god is it slow.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#142

Post by swiley »

dTal wrote: post #109
astrobe_ wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IRC has gigatons of clients because it is an open protocol. Some clients are even shareware/commercial. Same goes for servers and server admin interfaces. IRC may have its shortcomings, but its worst defect, for the too many people that want to have fun while pretending to communicate, is that it is not "modern".

Its worst problem is the inability to request scrollback from the server. I don't understand why that extension wasn't written, like, 20 years ago. You also need a "de facto official" client that includes a small list of default servers, and big friendly buttons for /JOIN and /PART - in fact the user should not be required to type a /COMMAND at any point.

Yes, I think this is fundamentally the main issue people have with IRC.

Some IRC users don’t like the idea of the channel being logged though? That’s the best I can come up with for an argument against it.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#143

Post by znpy »

zapzupnz wrote: post #110
astrobe_ wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IRC has gigatons of clients because it is an open protocol. Some clients are even shareware/commercial. Same goes for servers and server admin interfaces. IRC may have its shortcomings, but its worst defect, for the too many people that want to have fun while pretending to communicate, is that it is not "modern".

> for the too many people that want to have fun while pretending to communicate It's exactly this kind of flippant dismissal that is why IRC is dying, because there are too many people who equate modernity with frivolity. That is, unless our requirements strictly adhere to your arbitrarily-defined notions of that which has merit, our voices are left unheard. And IRC's greatest defenders wonder why everybody jumps shi…

> a contacts list that travels across sessions, regardless of client

Tell me exactly how use slack, directly (without bridges and stuff) without using the official client.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#144

Post by bdayx »

No surprise here. The popular people have taken over software "development", which means that in a group of 40 people 36 talk and 4 work.

The talkers need things like GitHub and Slack in order to appear productive. The more bureaucracy and distractions the better.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#145

Post by swalladge »

norswap wrote: post #140

I never see addressed the biggest reason (according to me) why IRC loses, so let's spell it out. IRC isn't persistent (i.e. you can't read messages delivered while you were offline) unless you setup an IRC shell. This is technically difficult (much more so than dicking with nickservs and so, which is already a pain point). Hosting it is also not free . Count 5$/month on CloudOcean or some such. https://www.irccloud.c…

I wonder how much work it would be to extend the IRC protocol and popular implementations to include some sort of persistence. It's such a shame that a simple, open, accessible protocol for communication is being lost simply because of this and that it's "too difficult".

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#146

Post by mirkules »

norswap wrote: post #140

I never see addressed the biggest reason (according to me) why IRC loses, so let's spell it out. IRC isn't persistent (i.e. you can't read messages delivered while you were offline) unless you setup an IRC shell. This is technically difficult (much more so than dicking with nickservs and so, which is already a pain point). Hosting it is also not free . Count 5$/month on CloudOcean or some such. https://www.irccloud.c…

Once all the chat systems without persistence have disappeared, some new hip company will come along touting “no persistence” as a feature, maybe even a privacy feature.

But seriously, I don’t understand why persistence is such a huge deal to people. Chat is for transient chat - it is meant to be non-persistent just like verbal communication.

There are so many mechanisms for persistent messaging (forums, text messages, emaills, and everything in between), I don’t understand how an entire industry spawned from a concept we already had?

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#147

Post by the8472 »

zapzupnz wrote: post #110
astrobe_ wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IRC has gigatons of clients because it is an open protocol. Some clients are even shareware/commercial. Same goes for servers and server admin interfaces. IRC may have its shortcomings, but its worst defect, for the too many people that want to have fun while pretending to communicate, is that it is not "modern".

> for the too many people that want to have fun while pretending to communicate It's exactly this kind of flippant dismissal that is why IRC is dying, because there are too many people who equate modernity with frivolity. That is, unless our requirements strictly adhere to your arbitrarily-defined notions of that which has merit, our voices are left unheard. And IRC's greatest defenders wonder why everybody jumps shi…

> - the ability to delete one's own message, and have that deletion propagated > - the ability to delete other peoples' messages, and have that deletion propagated

That means you are asking for control over other people's computers and what information they are allowed to display, i.e. DRM. It is also a falsification of history.

> - the ability for all participants in the community to see messages in the same format, including code blocks with syntax highlighting, images, video links, and web embeds

That excludes people with text interfaces.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#148

Post by josteink »

norswap wrote: post #140

I never see addressed the biggest reason (according to me) why IRC loses, so let's spell it out. IRC isn't persistent (i.e. you can't read messages delivered while you were offline) unless you setup an IRC shell. This is technically difficult (much more so than dicking with nickservs and so, which is already a pain point). Hosting it is also not free . Count 5$/month on CloudOcean or some such. https://www.irccloud.c…

> IRC isn't persistent (i.e. you can't read messages delivered while you were offline)

It’s chat, not email.

That’s a natural feature of the medium.

In the age of Google, why on earth would you want to record everything?

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#149

Post by TheSwordsman »

vertis wrote: post #136
TheSwordsman wrote: post #33

As an admin helping out the Go Slack workspace, which is about to cross 39,500 registered users, they would be ill-advised to go with Slack if moderation is one of their goals. Full disclosure: our Workspakce does have some sort of agreement with Slack, so our space isn't a free space (we have full history), and even then we aren't able to get them to provide support around moderation of users. There is no mechanism…

I can't fathom open source projects and communities using slack as a communication platform. I like slack, it's a great product for business, where you can pay $X for each user in your org. However, OS and non-profit communities quickly run into the history issue. There is no way that some of the communities I'm part of on Slack could pay for all the users. For example, the "Maker's Kitchen" slack has 1500-2000 peopl…

As I mentioned, in our community we have some deal with Slack so that we are paid (up to a point) and have full message history retention. Search can also go through all of those messages too. This is extremely valuable, and is a selling point for Slack if you can somehow get on to a paid plan without breaking the bank.

But in my experience, many don't use the search anyhow. :P

I'll admit, I don't know the full details of the relationship we have with Slack as I'm just an admin and not an owner. It is paid for by someone, but I don't know how much we're paying per head or of it's a flat rate.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#150

Post by the8472 »

swalladge wrote: post #145
norswap wrote: post #140

I never see addressed the biggest reason (according to me) why IRC loses, so let's spell it out. IRC isn't persistent (i.e. you can't read messages delivered while you were offline) unless you setup an IRC shell. This is technically difficult (much more so than dicking with nickservs and so, which is already a pain point). Hosting it is also not free . Count 5$/month on CloudOcean or some such. https://www.irccloud.c…

I wonder how much work it would be to extend the IRC protocol and popular implementations to include some sort of persistence. It's such a shame that a simple, open, accessible protocol for communication is being lost simply because of this and that it's "too difficult".

IRCv3 has history replay message types. It's there in the protocol. But it's only useful if both clients and server or proxy support it.
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