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I apologise, I wasn't clear. I primarily use IRC, but I also use Bitleebee, but it isn't my primarily protocol(s). I just meant that I could combine all these

by Svip 10y ago

I apologise, I wasn't clear. I primarily use IRC, but I also use Bitleebee, but it isn't my primarily protocol(s). I just meant that I could combine all these protocols in one client. As for Slack's IRC gateway, I think it's pretty decent, yes. I personally prefer it to Slack's own client (again, that's just me). But this is what bothers me about Discord, because that doesn't offer an IRC gateway, and I am forced to use their client(s). And if you're like me - which apparently few are - and you are in many different communities, that use different protocols to communicate, having a bunch of different clients just means more hassle.

lmm 10y ago
Most of the communities I'm part of are onto Discord now, and that's a lot nicer experience in terms of having them all in once place than Biteebee ever was. I'm all for federation and open protocols, I wish Discord had gateways and I'm hopeful for Matrix. But I don't think IRC is the answer: it's inherently without identity, inherently text-only, inherently historyless. These problems can't be solved well without protocol changes, but for whatever reason IRC has developed a community that is hostile to any protocol improvements and preferes to encourage ad-hoc hacks for these aspects, none of which works well and most of which don't work at all.
- Svip 10y ago
  I definitely agree that IRC would do well to have improvements, like an IRC/2.0 protocol. But no one is willing to get involved, likely because A) they don't want to develop a standard no one will use, B) get bogged in draft committees for years and C) they just aren't motivated. I only proposed intermediate solutions, because I thought that would be more likely to actually amount to something. Kind of like when Google did SPDY to push for HTTP/2.0, but you'd need a player the size and with the interest of Google to do IRC/2.0. Someone to make the decisions. It's almost ridiculous that something as ubiquitous as instant communication doesn't get more serious attention.
  - detaro 10y ago
    There is quite a bit of work happening on IRCv3? (at least it looks like that from the outside, I haven't looked into it so can't judge the quality) http://ircv3.net/ http://ircv3.net/
    - lmm 10y ago
      Many IRC fans hate "IRCv3" and feel they're unjustly piggybacking the IRC name to push their own protocol. (Compare Gnutella2).
  - lmm 10y ago
    I don't think building it as a tower of IRC extensions will ever work. You get stuck on "good enough", and the IRC userbase is aggressively anti-centralisation (far more so than the HTTP userbase), anti-change even, and text-oriented. I've long since given up on any effort to make IRC good. I think energy is more productively spent on ground-up protocols that can include the good parts of IRC but also solve the problems I mentioned. Matrix is where most of my hope is going at the moment.

by Svip 10y ago

lmm 10y ago

Most of the communities I'm part of are onto Discord now, and that's a lot nicer experience in terms of having them all in once place than Biteebee ever was. I'm all for federation and open protocols, I wish Discord had gateways and I'm hopeful for Matrix. But I don't think IRC is the answer: it's inherently without identity, inherently text-only, inherently historyless. These problems can't be solved well without protocol changes, but for whatever reason IRC has developed a community that is hostile to any protocol improvements and preferes to encourage ad-hoc hacks for these aspects, none of which works well and most of which don't work at all.

Svip 10y ago
I definitely agree that IRC would do well to have improvements, like an IRC/2.0 protocol. But no one is willing to get involved, likely because A) they don't want to develop a standard no one will use, B) get bogged in draft committees for years and C) they just aren't motivated. I only proposed intermediate solutions, because I thought that would be more likely to actually amount to something. Kind of like when Google did SPDY to push for HTTP/2.0, but you'd need a player the size and with the interest of Google to do IRC/2.0. Someone to make the decisions. It's almost ridiculous that something as ubiquitous as instant communication doesn't get more serious attention.
- detaro 10y ago
  There is quite a bit of work happening on IRCv3? (at least it looks like that from the outside, I haven't looked into it so can't judge the quality) http://ircv3.net/ http://ircv3.net/
  - lmm 10y ago
    Many IRC fans hate "IRCv3" and feel they're unjustly piggybacking the IRC name to push their own protocol. (Compare Gnutella2).
- lmm 10y ago
  I don't think building it as a tower of IRC extensions will ever work. You get stuck on "good enough", and the IRC userbase is aggressively anti-centralisation (far more so than the HTTP userbase), anti-change even, and text-oriented. I've long since given up on any effort to make IRC good. I think energy is more productively spent on ground-up protocols that can include the good parts of IRC but also solve the problems I mentioned. Matrix is where most of my hope is going at the moment.