Absence of certain features in IRC considered a feature • Hacker News Board

Re: Absence of certain features in IRC considered a feature

#201

Post by dmitriid » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 4:13 AM UTC

simias wrote: post #163

dmitriid wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It is equivalent. It is also the reason why Slack and others have taken the world by storm, and why IRC and XMPP are more or less dying. Because Slack (and FB messenger, and Apple Messages, and Discord, and... and...) provide an out-of-the-box experience immediately available to anyone (including non-programmers or programmers who couldn’t care less about scripting a yet another barebones app).

And the problems continue beyond just scripting another app. The world is mobile, and old protocols have missed the memo.

Re: Absence of certain features in IRC considered a feature

#202

Post by zaarn » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 4:17 AM UTC

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

In my experience, the lounge leaks a lot of memory. After about 30 days of running, it used 8GB and the shared hoster I put it on killed it. Would definitely not recommend as bouncer.

Re: Absence of certain features in IRC considered a feature

#203

Post by valtism » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 5:56 AM UTC

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.

Tangentially, blog posts peppered with Tumblr-style gifs is the worst thing when trying to read the content. Thankfully it seems to be a trend that is dying off, but I don't understand how people read text without being distracted by the bright and bouncy gifs sandwiching it.

Re: Absence of certain features in IRC considered a feature

#204

Post by zaarn » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 6:27 AM UTC

glacials wrote: post #124

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…

The author specifically calls out ephemerality as a feature of IRC. If it's easy to get history people will assume everyone is reading what they're typing. This would make people feel obligated to play catch-up every time they miss some messages due to being AFK or in the zone. By making history hard to obtain, IRC simulates real-world conversation -- you're either in the room or you're not.

If I wanted real world conversation, I can drop into a conference call, I don't need IRC for that.

Chats in organizations are specifically for when email is not realtime enough but it's important to keep a record of the conversations for some time.

Re: Absence of certain features in IRC considered a feature

#205

Post by antepodius » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 7:03 AM UTC

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.)

Well, the the article pointed out one way... Have a community somewhat gated by the need for technical proficiency, and have a bigger, shinier, "popcorn internet" alternative (facebook) to bait the normies away from it. For example, suckless programs are configured by compiling them from source. This is for several reasons, but one explicit one is that it keeps away less technical users, keeping the userbase "small and elite".

The eternal september happened when the manswarm flooded in; you can't bail out the flood, but it'll drain to a lower-common-denominator cesspool if one is available, and you might be able to build a high enough tower to stay above the waterline.

Re: Absence of certain features in IRC considered a feature

#206

Post by mproud » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 7:27 AM UTC

This is called being stubborn.

If you don’t adapt, you die. Wanna die? Sure, no one is stopping you.

Re: Absence of certain features in IRC considered a feature

#207

Post by rakoo » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 7:32 AM UTC

superkuh wrote: post #193

rakoo wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's at the same level as "just run curlftpfs on a remote server and trivially run CVS on it" ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 ). The HN crowd is quick to find a good reason why the proposed solution isn't the correct one, but unfortunately it's only true in very niche cases. When it's working for the 80% we're always complaining about it not working for the 20%.

It's really not. Everyone thinks it's super complicated and dangerous because everyone is thinking about running a webserver, a database, and some active scripting language. Just running a webserver is dead simple. The only technical stumbling block would be forwarding the port from the router and a good chunk of internet users understand that.

> Just running a webserver is dead simple.

You can't seriously say that and talk about port forwarding in the next sentence. Some people still think internet is the web is Google is Facebook. Some people (understandably) don't want to have something running 24/7. Most people won't be able to maintain their server, turning them into the biggest botnet ever created. I'd love the internet to be more decentralized, but this is just not reasonable.

Re: Absence of certain features in IRC considered a feature

#208

Post by xPaw » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 7:40 AM UTC

zaarn wrote: post #202

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

In my experience, the lounge leaks a lot of memory. After about 30 days of running, it used 8GB and the shared hoster I put it on killed it. Would definitely not recommend as bouncer.

If you have many users/channels, you can tweak `maxHistory`, which controls how many messages are kept in memory per channel for the backlog. That's where most of the memory usage comes from.

https://thelounge.chat/docs/configuration#maxhistory

Re: Absence of certain features in IRC considered a feature

#209

Post by tapland » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 8:03 AM UTC

detaro wrote: post #165

tapland wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'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.

I don't think irccloud does either?

Re: Absence of certain features in IRC considered a feature

#210

Post by efreak » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 8:41 AM UTC

Karunamon wrote: post #91

lossolo wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Use nickserv and chanserv? This is solved problem. 2. This is also a solved problem, there are bots that log everything on the channel and then you can read/search through channel history from web interface. But mostly this is not needed as you can just spin znc for whole your team.

Re 1: Most users of Slack don't even use the slash commands, so I'd say that requiring what ammounts to CLI syntax to manage channels and accounts, something you get for free in a user-friendly way in most modern communication tools, is a nonstarter. Re 2: ZNC works, but is a really trash user experience from both sides. For instance, you never really know if someone is there or not. Also no push messages, which brea…

1. GUIs can be (and have been) written for channel management and other functions. There's multiple clients (or client plugins) for such functions as changing modes (with checkboxes), changing the topic, etc.

2. ZNC has plugins for push messages, or at least it did when I was using it several years ago. My personal bouncer was configured to automatically set my away status when I went offline; alternatives include (de)voicing (in)active users, changing nickname, etc. When my bouncer had no clients connected and someone sent me a pm, it was configured to send a message to Pushbullet.

If you're not using a bouncer or the bouncer is down, services packages such as anope may include a memoserv for sending messages to offline users; on services login, memoserv will notify you of pending messages.