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Seeing a lot of comments on the thread to the tune of "just use IRC; I don't use the features that Slack et al offer on top of IRC, so neither should anybody el

Seeing a lot of comments on the thread to the tune of "just use IRC; I don't use the features that Slack et al offer on top of IRC, so neither should anybody else". You can have your opinions about Slack, about its apps being rubbish, about it being proprietary, whatever. But imagining that your personal use case, and those of your peers who probably are of a similar technical inclination, should represent the be-all and end-all of real-time online communication for groups is really unhelpful. Yes, Slack and its ilk aren't perfect, but neither is IRC. What would be really great is if the IRC protocol could evolve to support some of these new features, perhaps with some sort of minimum specification for graphical clients that want to implement these new features — and graceful fallbacks for those that don't and text-based client users.

dijit 8y ago
Good news; https://ircv3.net/irc/ https://ircv3.net/irc/ Now if only we had millions in VC money to create nice new clients.
- zapzupnz 8y ago
  I've seen this before. The changes look rather modest as far as the gap between IRC and things like Discord and Slack go.
  - dijit 8y ago
    Isn’t that kind of the point. A conservative approach to adding features so that they can be at least implemented well and understood? What are the main, real benefits slack has over IRC; * resilience to network disruption * onboarding of new users. * inline media (clients, not protocol, should implement this) You could argue threads or SIP/VOIP but my admittedly anecdotal evidence suggests that these are seldom used. And, there’s no reason IRC could not expand to relay those.
    - zapzupnz 8y ago
      > A conservative approach to adding features so that they can be at least implemented well and understood? Well, sure. But while IRC slowly proposes and implements relatively basic features of modern clients, the world will go on without it. That's already happening. Not that this is a problem for existing IRC users, evidently. But if this is the case, and it's accepted, then it would be great if some HN users would stop trying to pretend that IRC has everything that people want — if that were the case, we'd not have all these alternatives. > * inline media (clients, not protocol, should implement this) Which is why part of what I said, and I know you didn't specifically reply to it but I must restate it, is some sort of minimal specification for graphical clients to present the user-facing features that people expect of a modern chat client, voluntarily entered into but with the potential as a great feature to advertise the modernity of a client. My thinking is that otherwise someone will just make their own Slack knock-off IRC client, bundle it with their own IRCd, and we'll re-enter the IRC wars again. Proprietary IRC with a proprietary client — not that much different from any other proprietary solution other than IRC users reaping none of the benefits. Going on to the main benefits of Slack, I can't really speak to Slack. However, I'm a Discord user, and I know Discord is inspired of Slack. What I'd like from Discord is: - persistent session without needing a bouncer, or a simulation of such (e.g. when I connect, show me the last few messages on the server; when I scroll up, keep showing me more) - an easily customisable role-based permission system rather than the relatively simplistic op/hop/voice, with customisable symbols (as opposed to colours) - channel categories - consistent and predictable text formatting, including a subset of Markdown — if I show a code block, I want everybody to see it as a code block (even if all that means is forcing a fixed-width font for a given block of text) - separating a user's identity from their username, allowing multiple users to use the same nick differentiated by a discriminator - avatars! - push notifications! It's all the little things that add up to a pleasant experience with things like Slack and Discord. I'm sure many will see many of those things as quite separate from an IRC, but these are the things to which people are now accustomed.
u801e 8y ago
> Seeing a lot of comments on the thread to the tune of "just use IRC; I don't use the features that Slack et al offer on top of IRC, so neither should anybody else". Where I work, the argument is reversed: "just use Slack; I can't deal with some of the limitations of IRC because I'm not willing to, so no one should use IRC." This effectively happened once Slack discontinued the IRC gateway they provided.
atomi 8y ago
Slack is trash because it's bloated. Some people just need text chat and external urls are sufficient for sharing other media.
- zapzupnz 8y ago
  Slack's implementation is bloated. Yes, _some_ people just need text chat; the problem is when people believe that the same requirements extend to _everyone_. For those people with the need for text chat, sure, use IRC, go right ahead. But for those who need or are accustomed to more, let's stop pretending that things like Slack or Discord don't have things to offer. Since the implementation is where the bloat exists, it's a fairly simple fix: make open servers and better clients.
  - u801e 8y ago
    > Since the implementation is where the bloat exists, it's a fairly simple fix: make open servers and better clients. So when is Slack going to do that? If they were open source, then anyone could do it based on the protocol specification. But since they're not, then it's up to the employees at Slack and they don't seem to be going in that direction. The gateway solution they had that got around those problems with their clients was discontinued.
    - zapzupnz 8y ago
      I didn't necessarily mean better clients for Slack. I meant in general, which is why I said open servers. We've got things like Mattermost and Matrix now, we might see others coming forth, and perhaps one day there'll be extensions to IRC to support some of these niceties. And yes, there'll always be the lovely Slack-like web frontends, and someone will inevitably package those up as native apps with React Native or Electron or whatever. But there's also room for good, high-quality, optimised clients for those platforms as well.

dijit 8y ago

Good news; https://ircv3.net/irc/ https://ircv3.net/irc/ Now if only we had millions in VC money to create nice new clients.

zapzupnz 8y ago
I've seen this before. The changes look rather modest as far as the gap between IRC and things like Discord and Slack go.
- dijit 8y ago
  Isn’t that kind of the point. A conservative approach to adding features so that they can be at least implemented well and understood? What are the main, real benefits slack has over IRC; * resilience to network disruption * onboarding of new users. * inline media (clients, not protocol, should implement this) You could argue threads or SIP/VOIP but my admittedly anecdotal evidence suggests that these are seldom used. And, there’s no reason IRC could not expand to relay those.
  - zapzupnz 8y ago
    > A conservative approach to adding features so that they can be at least implemented well and understood? Well, sure. But while IRC slowly proposes and implements relatively basic features of modern clients, the world will go on without it. That's already happening. Not that this is a problem for existing IRC users, evidently. But if this is the case, and it's accepted, then it would be great if some HN users would stop trying to pretend that IRC has everything that people want — if that were the case, we'd not have all these alternatives. > * inline media (clients, not protocol, should implement this) Which is why part of what I said, and I know you didn't specifically reply to it but I must restate it, is some sort of minimal specification for graphical clients to present the user-facing features that people expect of a modern chat client, voluntarily entered into but with the potential as a great feature to advertise the modernity of a client. My thinking is that otherwise someone will just make their own Slack knock-off IRC client, bundle it with their own IRCd, and we'll re-enter the IRC wars again. Proprietary IRC with a proprietary client — not that much different from any other proprietary solution other than IRC users reaping none of the benefits. Going on to the main benefits of Slack, I can't really speak to Slack. However, I'm a Discord user, and I know Discord is inspired of Slack. What I'd like from Discord is: - persistent session without needing a bouncer, or a simulation of such (e.g. when I connect, show me the last few messages on the server; when I scroll up, keep showing me more) - an easily customisable role-based permission system rather than the relatively simplistic op/hop/voice, with customisable symbols (as opposed to colours) - channel categories - consistent and predictable text formatting, including a subset of Markdown — if I show a code block, I want everybody to see it as a code block (even if all that means is forcing a fixed-width font for a given block of text) - separating a user's identity from their username, allowing multiple users to use the same nick differentiated by a discriminator - avatars! - push notifications! It's all the little things that add up to a pleasant experience with things like Slack and Discord. I'm sure many will see many of those things as quite separate from an IRC, but these are the things to which people are now accustomed.

u801e 8y ago

> Seeing a lot of comments on the thread to the tune of "just use IRC; I don't use the features that Slack et al offer on top of IRC, so neither should anybody else". Where I work, the argument is reversed: "just use Slack; I can't deal with some of the limitations of IRC because I'm not willing to, so no one should use IRC." This effectively happened once Slack discontinued the IRC gateway they provided.

atomi 8y ago

Slack is trash because it's bloated. Some people just need text chat and external urls are sufficient for sharing other media.

zapzupnz 8y ago
Slack's implementation is bloated. Yes, _some_ people just need text chat; the problem is when people believe that the same requirements extend to _everyone_. For those people with the need for text chat, sure, use IRC, go right ahead. But for those who need or are accustomed to more, let's stop pretending that things like Slack or Discord don't have things to offer. Since the implementation is where the bloat exists, it's a fairly simple fix: make open servers and better clients.
- u801e 8y ago
  > Since the implementation is where the bloat exists, it's a fairly simple fix: make open servers and better clients. So when is Slack going to do that? If they were open source, then anyone could do it based on the protocol specification. But since they're not, then it's up to the employees at Slack and they don't seem to be going in that direction. The gateway solution they had that got around those problems with their clients was discontinued.
  - zapzupnz 8y ago
    I didn't necessarily mean better clients for Slack. I meant in general, which is why I said open servers. We've got things like Mattermost and Matrix now, we might see others coming forth, and perhaps one day there'll be extensions to IRC to support some of these niceties. And yes, there'll always be the lovely Slack-like web frontends, and someone will inevitably package those up as native apps with React Native or Electron or whatever. But there's also room for good, high-quality, optimised clients for those platforms as well.