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IRC necromancy

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Re: IRC necromancy

#41

Post by na85 »

kuschku wrote: post #38
na85 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Change aversion killed IRC. A lot of the opers on the big networks are extremely conservative and default to poo-pooing ideas because it's simpler. IRC with good mobile/push support could have taken off, but using it from a mobile device is painful because of the constant drops and the need to have your device responding to ping pongs every few seconds kills your battery.

> IRC with good mobile/push support could have taken off, but using it from a mobile device is painful because of the constant drops and the need to have your device responding to ping pongs every few seconds kills your battery. You mean, something like IRCCloud, or what I’m moving Quasseldroid to right now?

Yes, except irc cloud is a 3rd party platform and requires payment as far as I'm aware.

"Something like irc cloud" should have been baked into the ircd/protocol so that there's a lower barrier to entry.

Re: IRC necromancy

#42

Post by jaequery »

LocutusOfBorges wrote: post #18
jaequery wrote: post #7

irc is so useful that i cant believe it is dying, and aside from freenode perhaps even dead. so what killed the IRC? its not like theres any other alternative out there. slack seems to come close but its still very different and for a different purpose.

Discord, overwhelmingly. Every IRC community I used to be a part of even a year ago has made the jump. It's just more convenient for all concerned- the only holdouts are people clinging to their CLIs and people objecting for ideological reasons. I wish it hadn't come to this, but IRC's just stagnated for too long. The barrier to entry's too high, using it on mobile devices is a chore, the feature set's extremely limi…

I think Discord only hits the gaming community. What I liked about IRC was the diversity. I loved talking #basketball on Efnet, and so on.

Re: IRC necromancy

#43

Post by lowglow »

scruffyherder wrote: post #32
lowglow wrote: post #3

I think the author, Neozeed, is the person back in the day when I asked them to teach me how to "hack", they instead taught me what telnet was and that there was a larger network beyond AOL. It lead me to what I am today. Thanks.

Unixgod? Lol long long time ago. ... But I'm just hosting this post, it's not mine. The rest of the blog ramblings are.

It was SOOOO Long ago I don't even remember my handle back then. That was a long time ago. What are you up to now?

Re: IRC necromancy

#44

Post by kuschku »

na85 wrote: post #41
kuschku wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IRC with good mobile/push support could have taken off, but using it from a mobile device is painful because of the constant drops and the need to have your device responding to ping pongs every few seconds kills your battery. You mean, something like IRCCloud, or what I’m moving Quasseldroid to right now?

Yes, except irc cloud is a 3rd party platform and requires payment as far as I'm aware. "Something like irc cloud" should have been baked into the ircd/protocol so that there's a lower barrier to entry.

Well, Quassel is the same, open source, under GPL, self-hosted. (Disclaimer: I contribute to Quassel occasionally)

Re: IRC necromancy

#45

Post by DiThi »

astrobe_ wrote: post #35
LocutusOfBorges wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discord, overwhelmingly. Every IRC community I used to be a part of even a year ago has made the jump. It's just more convenient for all concerned- the only holdouts are people clinging to their CLIs and people objecting for ideological reasons. I wish it hadn't come to this, but IRC's just stagnated for too long. The barrier to entry's too high, using it on mobile devices is a chore, the feature set's extremely limi…

> The barrier to entry's too high I don't understand this statement. One finds IRC clients everywhere. One literally has to know just one command at the beginning: /join. And then if you Google "IRC commands" or something like that, you get the rest of them easily (if your client lacks in the help area). > the feature set's extremely limited I don't understand this mindset. Why should a program have an extra-large se…

> One finds IRC clients everywhere.

Yet I find myself using the web interface of Freenode when I need it, instead of installing a client in my Linux machine with a single command, any of the ones I used for a long time.

> Is the value of a program measured by the number of features it has?

I'd say by the number of features reliably shared by everyone else. This is why XMPP never took off and basically Google killed it.

> Apples and oranges.

Discord specifically targeted communities that used IRC, at least initially. The main difference with the other chat services is that you can enter a room from a browser, so it's almost friction-less to bring someone. IRC natively doesn't support that but many servers could and did (and I think it's the reason IRC remained somewhat popular).

For the record, I don't like Discord for its proprietary and centralized nature (despite calling the communities "servers"). Instead I'll be supporting Matrix and Riot as soon as Riot issue #4488 is fixed.

Re: IRC necromancy

#46

Post by YSFEJ4SWJUVU6 »

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #36
astrobe_ wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The barrier to entry's too high I don't understand this statement. One finds IRC clients everywhere. One literally has to know just one command at the beginning: /join. And then if you Google "IRC commands" or something like that, you get the rest of them easily (if your client lacks in the help area). > the feature set's extremely limited I don't understand this mindset. Why should a program have an extra-large se…

I’ve been a software engineer for several years now and I still have trouble with MiRC and Adium. I tried Irssi and eventually gave up with it. The problem with IRC is that even the “simple” clients never just work. There’s always some little infuriating quirks that you have to dive super deep into configs to figure out if it’s even possible to resolve without some sort of PR to the repository.

These kinds of comments almost make me not want to live on this Earth any more.

Re: IRC necromancy

#47

Post by Linuturk »

astrobe_ wrote: post #35
LocutusOfBorges wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discord, overwhelmingly. Every IRC community I used to be a part of even a year ago has made the jump. It's just more convenient for all concerned- the only holdouts are people clinging to their CLIs and people objecting for ideological reasons. I wish it hadn't come to this, but IRC's just stagnated for too long. The barrier to entry's too high, using it on mobile devices is a chore, the feature set's extremely limi…

> The barrier to entry's too high I don't understand this statement. One finds IRC clients everywhere. One literally has to know just one command at the beginning: /join. And then if you Google "IRC commands" or something like that, you get the rest of them easily (if your client lacks in the help area). > the feature set's extremely limited I don't understand this mindset. Why should a program have an extra-large se…

Having setup and attempted to administer an IRC server, I'd say that's where the barrier exists for someone wanting to create a new community outside of the huge Freenode network.

Re: IRC necromancy

#48

Post by debaserab2 »

astrobe_ wrote: post #35
LocutusOfBorges wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discord, overwhelmingly. Every IRC community I used to be a part of even a year ago has made the jump. It's just more convenient for all concerned- the only holdouts are people clinging to their CLIs and people objecting for ideological reasons. I wish it hadn't come to this, but IRC's just stagnated for too long. The barrier to entry's too high, using it on mobile devices is a chore, the feature set's extremely limi…

> The barrier to entry's too high I don't understand this statement. One finds IRC clients everywhere. One literally has to know just one command at the beginning: /join. And then if you Google "IRC commands" or something like that, you get the rest of them easily (if your client lacks in the help area). > the feature set's extremely limited I don't understand this mindset. Why should a program have an extra-large se…

> One literally has to know just one command at the beginning: /join. And then if you Google "IRC commands"

If your UX requires needing to google for syntax to type into your program in order to use basic features of the app, there is absolutely no way you are going to take off with people that are used to programs like twitter, gchat, skype, and facebook messenger.

I grew up on IRC and have a lot of fond memories of it. I don't particularly miss all the constant rolling brown-out connection issues and functionality/syntax that differed depending on what server you were connected to. It's no wonder someone came in and easily stole the thunder out from underneath IRC. Engineer types might have been keen to how transparently most IRC clients exposed the protocol, but I suspect for the vast majority of users IRC was tolerated, not embraced.

I don't think Discord deserves all the credit either, I really think it started with slack being adopted within developer communities and open source projects. Discord got the gamers, Slack (initially at least) got the developers.

Re: IRC necromancy

#49

Post by na85 »

kuschku wrote: post #44
na85 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, except irc cloud is a 3rd party platform and requires payment as far as I'm aware. "Something like irc cloud" should have been baked into the ircd/protocol so that there's a lower barrier to entry.

Well, Quassel is the same, open source, under GPL, self-hosted. (Disclaimer: I contribute to Quassel occasionally)

Again, it needs to be baked into the server, otherwise it's just another barrier to entry.

Re: IRC necromancy

#50

Post by reificator »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #29
LocutusOfBorges wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discord, overwhelmingly. Every IRC community I used to be a part of even a year ago has made the jump. It's just more convenient for all concerned- the only holdouts are people clinging to their CLIs and people objecting for ideological reasons. I wish it hadn't come to this, but IRC's just stagnated for too long. The barrier to entry's too high, using it on mobile devices is a chore, the feature set's extremely limi…

> Discord, overwhelmingly. A community I'm a moderator of recently set up shop in Discordland, due to its superior user management stuff. Both I and another person independently the similarities to IRC; I said that we're re-inventing IRC practices from the ground up.

But with rich previews, seamless device handoff, persistent messaging when offline, including notifications, and of course VOIP/Video on top.

Now, you can get some of that in IRC via a bouncer, but it's nice to just have it baked in.

Of course, it is a centralized system, with all the issues present there.

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