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What features does IRC lack? The messaging, chat rooms or PMs, private servers, file sharing, etc has existed forever. You can also build any sort of tool for i

What features does IRC lack? The messaging, chat rooms or PMs, private servers, file sharing, etc has existed forever. You can also build any sort of tool for integration with it. I guess it lacks persistence and access to history? But there are surely ways to solve that.

paulddraper 8y ago
> persistence and access to history Yep. > there are surely ways to solve that Most common solution is to use something else.
weberc2 8y ago
I’ve honestly never found an IRC client with a sane UI. If it’s tedious for technical folks, why do you expect it to be preferable to slack?
gregmac 8y ago
Off the top of my head... persistence, history, search, rich formatting, image previews, synchronization between devices, usable mobile clients, group/here/channel mentions, channel directory/search, channel descriptions, file upload/sharing (XDCC is not this), multi-line/expandable messages (eg, paste code or logs without flooding the channel), user status (away/DND). Some of this can be approximated with bots, of course, but there's a lot of extra work then required to make that work (namely, setting up, writing and maintaining the bot). Some of this can be done client-side, but then you have inconsistent experience.. you don't know if the other user is going to get the image preview or if their client understands markdown or some other formatting, or is going to interpret and display your message using some other markup format. Some of this you can also work around with one of those persistent IRC connection proxies, provided each user gets one and that is also maintained by somebody. Eventually someone packages this stuff all together for simple deployment.. and basically creates a bad clone of Slack, but with 10x maintenance requirement and so many more things that can break.
- kuschku 8y ago
  As long as you’re willing to run a bouncer (and an organisation could run one for all their users), there are usable mobile clients with synchronization between devices, persistence, user status and even profile images. For example my app https://quasseldroid.info/ https://quasseldroid.info/ which requires you to run the https://quassel-irc.org/ https://quassel-irc.org/ bouncer, but provides all that. As well as IRCCloud and Weechat-Android, which are also very awesome and provide a similar amount of functionality. The other features are atm a work in progress.
  - gregmac 8y ago
    This is kind of my point though, especially for a company: this is kind of a pain to setup for technical users that want to get the functionality. It's basically a complete barrier for the types of users who still primarily use e-mail, phone calls and in-person meetings.
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    - kuschku 8y ago
      I agree — the current usability is still very suboptimal, and we need to work on it a lot. But compared to where we’ve been a few years ago, it’s already gotten better. I wish I could do more, but in the end, I’m just a single developer improving the usability of a single app in my free time. For open source non-centralized solutions to compete with the proprietary options, you need lots of devs and even more funding. Matrix/Riot.im has that, and even they aren’t close to where Slack is. Most of us IRC devs are either getting nothing, or, as e.g. in my case, the donations don’t even cover the server costs. In the end, if people want open solutions to grow, they need to put their money where their mouth is.
- brianpgordon 8y ago
  irccloud is great and solves many of these issues. I'm not suggesting it's an alternative to Slack because of course then you're paying them $5/user/mo instead of paying Slack $6.67/user/mo and you're right back where you started, but if you're an IRC user looking for history/synchronization across devices, image previews, a mobile client, and drag-and-drop image sharing, irccloud is IMO totally worth it.
mirimir 8y ago
Slack's "persistence and access to history" seems questionable. And re IRC, I gather that Sabu got doxed based on EFnet logs from the late 90s.
VectorLock 8y ago
Custom emoji. You could say IRC could do anything any other chat program does, but it doesn't.
exogen 8y ago
It's been a while since I've used IRC daily, but I think I remember the basics... Doesn't IRC file sharing involve directly connecting to individual users to transfer the file, instead of those users choosing to download it at their leisure? And if you happened to be offline at the moment the user shared the file, can't you never download it unless you ask them to resend? For large, asynchronous groups, that is untenable. Slack's file sharing works because Slack hosts the file. Also, basic messaging features are indeed missing from IRC. How do you do a private group chat? Like an SMS group thread? Doesn't it only support channels and then individual 1:1 DMs? Slack has ad-hoc group DMs. On IRC you'd have to make a new channel every time. It's like getting a conference room every time you want to talk to more than one person at once. Slack also does voice and video calls, and screen sharing, and it's really quite good at it (feels light, not bloated). Sometimes talking with someone needs to turn into a face-to-face call.

paulddraper 8y ago

> persistence and access to history Yep. > there are surely ways to solve that Most common solution is to use something else.

weberc2 8y ago

I’ve honestly never found an IRC client with a sane UI. If it’s tedious for technical folks, why do you expect it to be preferable to slack?

gregmac 8y ago

Off the top of my head... persistence, history, search, rich formatting, image previews, synchronization between devices, usable mobile clients, group/here/channel mentions, channel directory/search, channel descriptions, file upload/sharing (XDCC is not this), multi-line/expandable messages (eg, paste code or logs without flooding the channel), user status (away/DND). Some of this can be approximated with bots, of course, but there's a lot of extra work then required to make that work (namely, setting up, writing and maintaining the bot). Some of this can be done client-side, but then you have inconsistent experience.. you don't know if the other user is going to get the image preview or if their client understands markdown or some other formatting, or is going to interpret and display your message using some other markup format. Some of this you can also work around with one of those persistent IRC connection proxies, provided each user gets one and that is also maintained by somebody. Eventually someone packages this stuff all together for simple deployment.. and basically creates a bad clone of Slack, but with 10x maintenance requirement and so many more things that can break.

kuschku 8y ago
As long as you’re willing to run a bouncer (and an organisation could run one for all their users), there are usable mobile clients with synchronization between devices, persistence, user status and even profile images. For example my app https://quasseldroid.info/ https://quasseldroid.info/ which requires you to run the https://quassel-irc.org/ https://quassel-irc.org/ bouncer, but provides all that. As well as IRCCloud and Weechat-Android, which are also very awesome and provide a similar amount of functionality. The other features are atm a work in progress.
- gregmac 8y ago
  This is kind of my point though, especially for a company: this is kind of a pain to setup for technical users that want to get the functionality. It's basically a complete barrier for the types of users who still primarily use e-mail, phone calls and in-person meetings.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - kuschku 8y ago
    I agree — the current usability is still very suboptimal, and we need to work on it a lot. But compared to where we’ve been a few years ago, it’s already gotten better. I wish I could do more, but in the end, I’m just a single developer improving the usability of a single app in my free time. For open source non-centralized solutions to compete with the proprietary options, you need lots of devs and even more funding. Matrix/Riot.im has that, and even they aren’t close to where Slack is. Most of us IRC devs are either getting nothing, or, as e.g. in my case, the donations don’t even cover the server costs. In the end, if people want open solutions to grow, they need to put their money where their mouth is.
brianpgordon 8y ago
irccloud is great and solves many of these issues. I'm not suggesting it's an alternative to Slack because of course then you're paying them $5/user/mo instead of paying Slack $6.67/user/mo and you're right back where you started, but if you're an IRC user looking for history/synchronization across devices, image previews, a mobile client, and drag-and-drop image sharing, irccloud is IMO totally worth it.

mirimir 8y ago

Slack's "persistence and access to history" seems questionable. And re IRC, I gather that Sabu got doxed based on EFnet logs from the late 90s.

VectorLock 8y ago

Custom emoji. You could say IRC could do anything any other chat program does, but it doesn't.

exogen 8y ago

It's been a while since I've used IRC daily, but I think I remember the basics... Doesn't IRC file sharing involve directly connecting to individual users to transfer the file, instead of those users choosing to download it at their leisure? And if you happened to be offline at the moment the user shared the file, can't you never download it unless you ask them to resend? For large, asynchronous groups, that is untenable. Slack's file sharing works because Slack hosts the file. Also, basic messaging features are indeed missing from IRC. How do you do a private group chat? Like an SMS group thread? Doesn't it only support channels and then individual 1:1 DMs? Slack has ad-hoc group DMs. On IRC you'd have to make a new channel every time. It's like getting a conference room every time you want to talk to more than one person at once. Slack also does voice and video calls, and screen sharing, and it's really quite good at it (feels light, not bloated). Sometimes talking with someone needs to turn into a face-to-face call.