I've always wondered why IRC clients didn't add seamless integration with NickServs of large networks. Maybe this was one of the reasons why services like Slack

I've always wondered why IRC clients didn't add seamless integration with NickServs of large networks. Maybe this was one of the reasons why services like Slack or Discord are successful; these services are taking your hand and are guiding you through everything, while IRC expects the user to read RFC and diagnostic server output in order to figure what's going on. I don't think it has to be this way. IRC as a protocol probably can be used to build a service as friendly as Slack. I.e. it's not a problem to add URL autoexpansion, like in this WeeChat plugin: https://github.com/antekone/youtube-autoexpand https://github.com/antekone/youtube-autoexpand . Of course it's not easily possible or practical to show pictures inside of the terminal window, but I think it's entirely possible to create a new modern Slack-competitive IRC client over a pure IRC network. What could be done on IRC can be seen in an old Microsoft app, Microsoft Comic Chat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Comic_Chat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Comic_Chat . (disclaimer: i prefer IRC to Slack/Discord but I get why for many people IRC is a bad idea)