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Absence of certain features in IRC considered a feature

drewdevault.com

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Re: Absence of certain features in IRC considered a feature

#161

Post by bluefox »

buzzert wrote: post #143
bluefox wrote: post #86

IRC is one of the few Internet venues I still frequent. Been using it since 1998. Some years ago an important (but small, private) channel moved from EFnet to Freenode, so that is the network I now use. Seeing Freenode IRCops looking to fix what ain't broken ("but it's opt-in" they'll say..) makes me have doubts about the move. If this sounds "get off my lawn" to you, you're getting it.

What are some good channels to visit in 2019? I feel like most of the ones I used to frequent are dead silent now. And my small friend channels have since moved to Discord.

I guess the programming language related ones are a good start. In my experience they have a high signal-to-noise ratio. Otherwise, it depends on your interests... you can always start your own, making sure it's good... There is/was a /list command, but I never really used it as all the good channels were at least +s ;) It's all word of mouth, really.

Re: Absence of certain features in IRC considered a feature

#162

Post by tapland »

LinuxBender wrote: post #83
maeln wrote: post #41

I love the simplicity of IRC, I still use it to this day, but I have to say, I understand why IRC cannot be used for any serious team communication. The two biggest pain point that I see is: 1. Because there is no real account management you don't have any proper authentication, which make administrating a channel real dodgy (even with network provided bots). 2. No offline history: You have to have a client/bouncer r…

For chat persistence, you can use TheLounge [1] [1] - https://thelounge.chat/ https://github.com/thelounge/thelounge

'Forget about bouncers', but how isn't this just a bouncer like ZNC, Irccloud etc?

Re: Absence of certain features in IRC considered a feature

#163

Post by simias »

dmitriid wrote: post #153
simias wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've scripted things like that in irssi the past (although using scp and one server I own, not imgur, but that shouldn't be massively harder). Most IRC clients are trivially scriptable. I'm always baffled when I see that the Signal client package is like 80MB on desktop and lacks basic functionality and configurability while irssi is barely 1MB, extremely lightweight and effectively endlessly configurable. Let's not…

> I've scripted things... Most IRC clients are trivially scriptable. Because all people find it valuable to find out how IRC clients are scriptable, figuring out all the moving parts to the clients' scripting interface, to a third-party API (if it exists), etc. etc. Or, you know, use Slack or Discord :)

That's not equivalent though, with IRC scripting you can do whatever you want. With Slack or Discord you do whatever Slack or Discord allows you to do. You also don't have to worry about features becoming unavailable or gimped in the future.

Re: Absence of certain features in IRC considered a feature

#164

Post by stcredzero »

P.S. A friend pointed out that the migration of non-hackers away from IRC is like a reverse Eternal September, which sounds great

I was a part of the original Eternal September in the 1980's as the Internet was opened up to undergrads. The idea of a "Reverse Eternal September" sounds super awesome! I wonder how it can be implemented? (In a limited context, not across the whole of the Internet, of course.)

Re: Absence of certain features in IRC considered a feature

#165

Post by detaro »

tapland wrote: post #162
LinuxBender wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For chat persistence, you can use TheLounge [1] [1] - https://thelounge.chat/ https://github.com/thelounge/thelounge

'Forget about bouncers', but how isn't this just a bouncer like ZNC, Irccloud etc?

I'd have defined a bouncer as something that also speaks IRC to the client.

Re: Absence of certain features in IRC considered a feature

#166

Post by asveikau »

ganzuul wrote: post #150
asveikau wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the lack of reliability I described a few comments up is not just a problem for 24/7 archiving. You will see it in everyday use: your connection will drop, it will take a while for a timeout to notice, and you will miss messages for that period. Now in a real life situation you can mishear or fail to hear. But technology can make this better.

I meant to address the second issue you bring up; that you ask if you missed anything during the period. I might not want a 24/7 archive. Especially not for all the silly things I said in my teens.

The irc userbase is pretty technical and maybe forgiving of glitches. So perhaps that is more OK there.

For the general population, the user may not know to doubt reliability, nor do I think they ought to. So I think there is value in higher reliability of delivery.

Re: Absence of certain features in IRC considered a feature

#167

Post by adrusi »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #148
dfabulich wrote: post #145

The article here claims that IRC is better than Matrix because Matrix supports pasting long snippets and IRC doesn't. The author furthermore claims that Matrix users are being a "nuisance" by posting long snippets to IRC with a link fallback, like this: ihabunek [m] sent a long message: ihabunek [m] uploaded an image: image.png (39KB) This is "being a nuisance"? It's just two chat lines, and the first line isn't mean…

I expanded on this here: https://lists.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/public-inbox/%3Ca6e64b69-c0cf-...

Worth drawing attention to: many users are familiar and comfortable with the way that Twitter handles embedded content, which is more-or-less the solution that you said would be "less of a concern for you".

I think this could prove to be a good compromise. https://i.imgur.com/O1qw0dI.png

Re: Absence of certain features in IRC considered a feature

#168

Post by zzo38computer »

maeln wrote: post #41

I love the simplicity of IRC, I still use it to this day, but I have to say, I understand why IRC cannot be used for any serious team communication. The two biggest pain point that I see is: 1. Because there is no real account management you don't have any proper authentication, which make administrating a channel real dodgy (even with network provided bots). 2. No offline history: You have to have a client/bouncer r…

"Because there is no real account management you don't have any proper authentication, which make administrating a channel real dodgy" I think often that lack of needing an accout is an advantage, and not a disadvantage. However, sometimes you do want some, and many IRC services include NS REGISTER and NS INFO and so on for account management; even without that, channels can be passworded if needed.

"You have to have a client/bouncer running 24/24 if you want history." Or a logging bot, which some channels have. Another alternative is for the logging to be part of the server implementation; I have once done this, and it is possible, but it does not seem to be common (although I think maybe it should be done more).

Another thing about IRC is that it can be used without any kind of special software (although software specifically for IRC is still useful; for one thing, if you do not have a IRC client then you must manually respond to pings). It isn't too complicated; Matrix and Discord and so on are too complicated.

Re: Absence of certain features in IRC considered a feature

#169

Post by u801e »

gridlockd wrote: post #156

> "Remember that not everyone is like you." Of course they aren't, but most people aren't like Drew Devault either. Most people don't use ancient hardware to prove some sort of point. The "Drew Devault will approve of it"-argument generally doesn't show up in a business case. In a perverse way, I am glad that programmers come up with better and better ways to waste hardware resources. In doing so, they ensure the con…

> Buy a new computer

I've purchased a number of computers over the last several decades, yet using facebook/slack is still slower and less responsive on a computer with a Core i7 processor and 16 MB of system memory and a 100 Mbps downstream connection compared with using usenet/irc on a 486 with 16 MB of system memory and a a 28.8 kbps downstream connection.

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