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I use IRC quite heavily. Especially for cryptocurrencies and local hackerspace channels. They're all very active. But I agree with the post, "irc is not fine",
by neiman 7y ago
I use IRC quite heavily. Especially for cryptocurrencies and local hackerspace channels. They're all very active.
But I agree with the post, "irc is not fine", and never was fine if you want to communicate with "regular" people.
It doesn't have spam filters, easy GUI or easy registration process. You could build all of those on top of IRC, and I'm sure that some people did, but there's no "standard" and most people just can't be bothered.
As the post said, often "IRC traffic isn’t allowed past institutional firewalls".
Besides, when was there a time in the history of the internet that irc was used to communicate with laypersons? If that's Mozilla's goal, they're right to switch.
That said, irc is fine, or even the best, for some communities. Especially communities of internet-savvy people.
It's decentralized, open, easy to access and inclusive. Such communities rarely meet the need for spam filters, and each of their members possess a well-distilled taste for personalized tools for irc.
That's why cryptocurrencies or hackerspaces channles are great on irc. That's why #rust channel is fantastic.
I still didn't find any modern substitution as good as irc for those communities. And yes Matrix, I'm looking at you! You're just not there yet.
- obhmt 7y ago>But I agree with the post, "irc is not fine", and never was fine if you want to communicate with "regular" people. That's cool. I don't want to communicate with regular people, I want to communicate with hackers. If I wanted to communicate with regular people I would use Twitter.
- gtirloni 7y agoAnd you're not Mozilla (which does want to communicate with laypeople) so...
- obhmt 7y agoIf they wanted to communicate with laypeople they'd offer support over the channels laypeople expect support nowadays, namely Facebook. Instead they are going to choose some middle ground that will displease everybody; they will botch it, as they like to do. They are already working on botching it, since they've moved the Rust channel to a closed source alternative with no expectations of privacy: https://blog.rust-lang.org/2019/04/26/Mozilla-IRC-Sunset-and-the-Rust-Channel.html https://blog.rust-lang.org/2019/04/26/Mozilla-IRC-Sunset-and...
- steveklabnik 7y agoMozilla did not move the Rust channels. We did.
- neiman 7y agoAre there really no good open source forum alternatives? -- asking for a friend :-)
- steveklabnik 7y agoWe already use an open source forum: discourse. If you mean real-time chat, in my personal opinion, Discord is the best choice. Zulip is good, if you can deal with it being a bit weird. The other options are fine, but not great. You may have different opinions than me personally.
- naiveai 7y agoYou mean the same Discord that's now majority-owned by Tencent, right?
- steveklabnik 7y agoI don’t know anything about their ownership, but I also don’t think you’re actually asking that question.
- mlw8gNBXBYouyps 7y agoI wrote a spam filter for freenode in a week. Even if Mozilla can't afford a week of work, their IRCd already has one. I'm kind of convinced that this change is culturally, rather than technically, motivated.