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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

#181

Post by Sendotsh »

swebs wrote: post #59
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…

After doing some digging, it looks like there's some people working on a new spec for IRC version 3. One of the additions is the ability to request chat history from the server. Though I'm not sure when it will be implemented since it's been on the table for 4 years now. https://github.com/ircv3/ircv3-specifications/milestone/4/

IRCv3, InspIRCd, and other IRC projects are now getting funding to push their development.

https://irc.com/lets-take-irc-further

Latest update from the team: https://irc.com/blog/2019-04-Development_updates

Re: Absence of certain features in IRC considered a feature

#182

Post by ohithereyou »

stcredzero wrote: post #164

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.)

Tilde servers were sort of the start in my mind of things like that, as is SDF

Re: Absence of certain features in IRC considered a feature

#183

Post by ohithereyou »

zimbatm wrote: post #42

The article doesn't talk about the best feature of Slack: a consistent message history for all the users. In IRC messages can easily get lost due to network splits or client disappearing. Not having everyone with the same message timeline can make some conversations quite awkward. This is really the only feature I miss in IRC.

I don't want a coherent message history. Nicknames not being 'owned' by anybody (on servers that don't implement services) and incoherence of message histories means that deniability is still alive and well in real time communications.

In an increasingly surveillance filled Internet, the fact that what I've said in the past can't be held against me today is a feature, not a bug.

Re: Absence of certain features in IRC considered a feature

#184

Post by Pigo »

ohithereyou wrote: post #180
ircdrone wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct, today’s internet has been taken over by companies and search engines by seo spam. But if there was anyone left enjoying tue good ole days of lawlessness, irc would still be a thing.

I don't know where you went, but there are still plenty of people using IRC. Not as many as were in the past, but it's still popular enough with the crowd of people I hang around.

Out of curiosity, what servers do you frequent? Or is it more personal servers that you and your friends run?

Re: Absence of certain features in IRC considered a feature

#185

Post by MaxLeiter »

andrewshadura wrote: post #179

Have the author tried to write bots for Matrix? It's much simpler than for IRC and doesn't require a persistent connection.

I don't think the author would agree its much simpler: https://drewdevault.com/2018/03/10/How-to-write-an-IRC-bot.h...

Re: Absence of certain features in IRC considered a feature

#186

Post by stcredzero »

ohithereyou wrote: post #182
stcredzero wrote: post #164

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.)

Tilde servers were sort of the start in my mind of things like that, as is SDF

I only know SDF as the abbreviation of the Sol Defense Force from the Robotech anime translations.

Re: Absence of certain features in IRC considered a feature

#187

Post by syntheticcdo »

moftz wrote: post #74
693471 wrote: post #51

IRC is forever tainted by graybeards that won't give up their terminal clients. People who want to get work done have moved on. The next generation of developers have no interest in IRC. It's a dead end.

I think you misunderstand the real quality of running an IRC client from anywhere on anything. I don't need to carry around a $4000 laptop to get my work done when I can use my home dev server from anywhere using a 10-year old Thinkpad junker. Break it? Pitch it and buy another for less than $100 on ebay.

Saying Slack requires a $4000 laptop is a bit of hyperbole don't you think? I've used the Slack web client on a $300 Chromebook and it was just fine.

Re: Absence of certain features in IRC considered a feature

#188

Post by lifthrasiir »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #76
KirinDave wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really. So you don't think Japanese folks just don't run into problems? Or Koreans? Or anyone using a primarily upper Unicode alphabet that is phonetic?

私の二番目の言語は日本語だよ

I do operate a Korean IRC network and a message cut in the middle (often between UTF-8 boundaries, making clients guessing a wrong encoding from time to time) is a typical sightseeing.

Re: Absence of certain features in IRC considered a feature

#189

Post by chrismorgan »

zimbatm wrote: post #42

The article doesn't talk about the best feature of Slack: a consistent message history for all the users. In IRC messages can easily get lost due to network splits or client disappearing. Not having everyone with the same message timeline can make some conversations quite awkward. This is really the only feature I miss in IRC.

I have experienced symptoms far worse than netsplit on Slack on at least four occasions in two and a half years of usage for work, with messages getting lost, duplicated and reordered, differently in different clients, and generally with no obvious indication that things are broken, unlike with netsplit where you’d see a bunch of parts/quits signalling the problem. Eventually it decides on what I hope is a consistent history, but even that only works because the clients are slaves to the server and don’t cache things.

Re: Absence of certain features in IRC considered a feature

#190

Post by comex »

mdellavo wrote: post #113
frou_dh wrote: post #88

Kooky "reaction GIFs" in work chat are so inane. I mean, there's certainly a time and a place for browsing funny GIFs on the web, but making it a first-class part of work chat is so juvenile it's unreal.

the resource usage for a partially buried idling slack window with a bunch of animated emoji and gifs is absurd

It is absurd, but that’s the fault of Slack, not the concept of an animated GIF itself.
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