Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server • Hacker News Board

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#301

Post by zapzupnz » Sat, Apr 27, 2019, 8:56 PM UTC

the8472 wrote: post #280

j1elo wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree for catastrophic mistakes. It doesn't mean the feature is rendered useless for the non catastrophic ones. Which one occurs more often than the other, that's another question, but I'd argue that the later is more common, and there is no doubt that people knew, in the event they wrote a very catastrophic secret, the limitations of the edition/deletion of messages (as long as most people nowadays seem to know ab…

The issue is that zapzupnz deletions to propagate. This can only be ensured in locked-down systems. There's a difference between offering corrections and retractions that others may or may not accept and actually enforcing deletions. This is both socially and information-theoretically true.

All I said is that the deletions should be propagated. The presentation of this can only be ensured in locked-down systems, but the actual propagation is simple enough. Just as the server can send all users within a channel "so-and-so said this message", it can say "so-and-so deleted this message" — it can be left up to the client whether to actually remove it or perhaps just hide it, ready to be shown again with a click.

Obviously on Discord, one is tied to the official client's behaviour since the ToS discourages third party clients. However, for Slack, Mattermost, Matrix etc. clients, the possibilities widen up.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#302

Post by MediumD » Sat, Apr 27, 2019, 9:02 PM UTC

TheSwordsman wrote: post #202

solipsism wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people aren't using search, then message history retention isn't that important for you it seems. I would suggest that maybe your people are using email in situations where they'd like more permanence. This is common, and Slack is treated more like a hallway conversation. Hallway conversations are enormously valuable, but if you want a record of something or if you want to make sure it reaches everyone, you use em…

It is to me personally, as I use it to find answers to questions I don't know the answer to. At a minimum, I can point them to someone who had a similar problem in case they solved it.

Yeah I feel the same as you. So much knowledge gets shared on Slack that searching the complete history is often really valuable.

I even went a step further and built a product that would generate FAQs from slack history and made it easy for people to add and categorize knowledge from Slack to provide answers to questions, metric, etc...

I would love to have open source communities use it for free if helped them manage supporting their communities easier.

It's https://landria.io. Would love to know if it would be useful for you.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#303

Post by zzo38computer » Sat, Apr 27, 2019, 9:10 PM UTC

swiley wrote: post #142

dTal wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If it is a public channel, then I think it should be logged. (People who do not want their messages logged should send them privately to the recipient instead; you can still use IRC for this).

A command for receiving the log may be helpful to have though as an optional extension.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#304

Post by laughinghan » Sat, Apr 27, 2019, 9:13 PM UTC

mrweasel wrote: post #229

laughinghan wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you have them deal with harassment and spam, or do you not believe it is as much of a problem for them as they claim it is?

I seriously doubt that both harassment and spam is a much of a problem as Mozilla, or others make it out to be. That's not to say that it's not a huge issue for a subset of people and it should be dealt with, to some extend. If someone want to harass you online, they will find a way, regardless of what governance or censorship you put in place.

Interesting. Do you have experience moderating a comparable community, or what leads you to believe that it's not as much of a problem as they make it out to be?

I'm sure it will always be possible to find a way to harass someone. But do you believe putting barriers in place has no effect on the amount of harassment that targets have to endure? What do you think of the computer security concept of "defense in depth"?

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#305

Post by mcguire » Sat, Apr 27, 2019, 9:50 PM UTC

sumedh wrote: post #152

xfitm3 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slack is trash and hostile to users, but unfortunately, it has significant momentum. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mozilla switches over.

> Slack is trash and hostile to users It seems better than Skype and Hipchat and whatever Google's latest chat app.

Notably, pasting code into skype seems to be an emoji-filled land of adventure.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#306

Post by mcguire » Sat, Apr 27, 2019, 9:58 PM UTC

carterschonwald wrote: post #236

pcwalton wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That experience report is valuable, thanks. I'll bring that up internally.

I recently evaluated a number of options. I was surprised to realize discord has by far the best moderation / permission / access conctrol management. Plus unlimited webhook and boy support. Granted, it has to handle gamer communities.

I'm hoping you meant "bot support". :-)

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#307

Post by mcguire » Sat, Apr 27, 2019, 10:01 PM UTC

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #86

iforgotpassword wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it sounds like regarding moderation, slack is at best on par with irc. And while on orc you can pretty much script and automate anything you want to facilitate the moderation job, with slack you're at the mercy of having some documented or undocumented api call available? One step forwards and two steps back...

And yet, slack has seen exponential growth, while IRC was always available but rarely used. We have seen this before and we will see it again. If OSS wants to be widely used, it needs to take UI seriously, and not dismiss it as frivolous “eye-candy”. It’s ok so say ‘no, we are fine within our niche’. But then you don’t get to arrogantly explain to them how they are “taking one step forward, two back” by not embarking…

Slack also has a marketing department.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#308

Post by mlw8gNBXBYouyps » Sat, Apr 27, 2019, 10:21 PM UTC

neiman wrote: post #57

I use IRC quite heavily. Especially for cryptocurrencies and local hackerspace channels. They're all very active. But I agree with the post, "irc is not fine", and never was fine if you want to communicate with "regular" people. It doesn't have spam filters, easy GUI or easy registration process. You could build all of those on top of IRC, and I'm sure that some people did, but there's no "standard" and most people j…

I wrote a spam filter for freenode in a week. Even if Mozilla can't afford a week of work, their IRCd already has one.

I'm kind of convinced that this change is culturally, rather than technically, motivated.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#309

Post by loulouxiv » Sat, Apr 27, 2019, 10:23 PM UTC

j1elo wrote: post #267

coldtea wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've just used such a feature less than 2 hours ago, in Whatsapp. Published a secret in the wrong group, by mistake. By this time, it's too late, anybody could have seen it, copied it, etc. Deleting it after the fact is security theater.

The "secret" (a link to another private whatsapp group to which not everybody should enter, just for easiness of organizational purposes in an event, so not much of a critical secret) was reportedly seen by around 5 people out of 200 in the group. No one of them bothered, if they did it would mean just a bit of explanation and taking them out of the new group. By all means, being able to quickly make a correction was…

So this is not a secret anymore. The only reasonable solution for such a mistake is to revoke the exposed token. If it is not easy to do then it is negligence of WhatsApp UX team. Your "let's pretend you didn't receive this" deletion message may have failed to propagate to some or all of the recipients, including that one guy that likes to mess things up

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#310

Post by mcguire » Sat, Apr 27, 2019, 10:23 PM UTC

TheSwordsman wrote: post #157

znpy wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Get your session key that's embedded in the HTML body after you log in. Be careful with this key since it has no expiry and can impersonate you as if you were connected via the default client, including undocumented API access. Find some application that can connect to the Slack RTM API and provide a chat TUI, using the session key you extracted. I know there are a few out there, but can't personally recommend one.

That's...appealing.