6 ms·

I never see addressed the biggest reason (according to me) why IRC loses, so let's spell it out. IRC isn't persistent (i.e. you can't read messages delivered w

I never see addressed the biggest reason (according to me) why IRC loses, so let's spell it out. IRC isn't persistent (i.e. you can't read messages delivered while you were offline) unless you setup an IRC shell. This is technically difficult (much more so than dicking with nickservs and so, which is already a pain point). Hosting it is also not free. Count 5$/month on CloudOcean or some such. https://www.irccloud.com/ https://www.irccloud.com/ is a great service that alleviates the pain, but now you're paying 5$/month and you just have IRC — you can't run other services on your server. If you value 5$ or your time more than the idea of "fighting for freedom by using IRC", you just don't use IRC unless you're forced to. This is not unreasonable, so many people do that, and consequently, communities miss out on these people. You want to save IRC? Make a free (as in free beer) clone of IRCCloud. Easy.

swalladge 7y ago
I wonder how much work it would be to extend the IRC protocol and popular implementations to include some sort of persistence. It's such a shame that a simple, open, accessible protocol for communication is being lost simply because of this and that it's "too difficult".
- the8472 7y ago
  IRCv3 has history replay message types. It's there in the protocol. But it's only useful if both clients and server or proxy support it.
- theclaw 7y ago
  Very simple - the server can push to the client when joining a channel. This would require the channel to be logged server-side and that the user authenticates with nickserv before joining channels. It does not need client-side changes so you could still use any client.
mirkules 7y ago
Once all the chat systems without persistence have disappeared, some new hip company will come along touting “no persistence” as a feature, maybe even a privacy feature. But seriously, I don’t understand why persistence is such a huge deal to people. Chat is for transient chat - it is meant to be non-persistent just like verbal communication. There are so many mechanisms for persistent messaging (forums, text messages, emaills, and everything in between), I don’t understand how an entire industry spawned from a concept we already had?
- caltelt 7y ago
  I know I hate it when I join IRC channels and have no context as to what anybody has been talking about, as there is no history to quickly go over. Even just having the past days history would help in this regard, at least for more active channels. It's the same as just barging into a conversation a group of people are having. You don't want to just join and start talking about a completely different topic. So you join, and wait for a bit to get a feel for what they're talking about before piping in. But with IRC, sometimes it can take _days_ to get that amount of information, depending on how active the channel is. The same thing could easily be accomplished by being able to read the last 10 messages in the channel.
  - intertextuality 7y ago
    That's where you just say "hi", regardless. Chat is transient. When I go online in Discord I don't read up the last few messages unless there's a particularly interesting discussion going on.
  - Moter8 7y ago
    On snoonet at least there is a channel option frequently used, that makes the channel send the last x messages to the recently joined user. It exists.
    - voltagex_ 7y ago
      What ircd are they using?
      - buovjaga 7y ago
        InspIRCd according to this: https://ircv3.net/support/networks.html https://ircv3.net/support/networks.html
- T-hawk 7y ago
  Why do people use chat services? They want responses. Getting responses is what Slack and Discord are optimized for and why they've gained adoption. The chat services enable responses, by making it low friction, by giving the feel of being informal and real-time in a way that email and forums don't. They also enable asynchronous responses by being persistent, that your message won't go lost and unseen by a moment without network connectivity, unlike IRC. They also enable responses by being cross-platform and device-independent, unlike SMS. They also enable responses by centralizing account control of who participates, so users can join a ready-made group organized by an administrator, unlike say Facebook messaging. Users seek maximal interaction. The Slack/Discord model achieves this by supporting both synchronous and asynchronous responses. The former requires an informal real-time interface, the latter requires persistence. That's what came together on these services that hadn't before.
josteink 7y ago
> IRC isn't persistent (i.e. you can't read messages delivered while you were offline) It’s chat, not email. That’s a natural feature of the medium. In the age of Google, why on earth would you want to record everything?
- intertextuality 7y ago
  At least for me, I participate in a lot of programming channels. I've saved a lot of stuff for later, that would otherwise be a pain to ask someone to answer it again. I log basically all of my irc chats because 1. storage is cheap 2. you never know when something could be useful later Let's not pretend individual nerds in IRC chat recording history is anything remotely close to what google is doing.
  - josteink 7y ago
    Thats individual logical logging. Making persistent server-logs and putting them on the web, makes them Google-creepy by default.
    - andai 7y ago
      Makes me wonder if googlebot knows how to login to Discord.
valeg 7y ago
https://thelounge.chat/ https://thelounge.chat/ is quite easy to install and provides persistence. Also, IRC channel history through Matrix bridge is persistent.
linuxftw 7y ago
Chatting isn't about always being online and getting messages. Somebody else in the channel should be capable of responding to a request. That's the whole point of a community, IMO. Need to make sure something important is captured from an IRC discussion? Put it on a wiki/mailing list. There's also things like meeting bots. Most communities I've seen, there's very little value in an IRC chat history for conversations other people had (eg, just stuff like 'help me with x').
OrgNet 7y ago
It might not be persistent by default, but there is a lot of its content that is being logged and made available on the web...
TheRealPomax 7y ago
Yep. Easy. So I assume you already did this, what's the frontend website for us to start using? (As a long time IRC user, I'd love a free irccloud with all the features of Slack and the freedom of IRC. However, setting that up scaled for "thousands of concurrent users" with normal, modern, administrator interfaces for all those tasks that the IRC RFC themselves left up to individual implementations is REALLY EFFING HARD, so no one has actually set up a service like that, to date)
- norswap 7y ago
  I'm part of those who don't really value "fighting for freedom via using IRC" so I use Slack & Discord. I have no stakes in saving IRC. Also, building and maintaining a free IRCCloud clone is worth much more of 5$/month of my time. And seriously, it's not that hard. I know people who master the ins and out of much more complex server stacks as a hobby. A nice example is the implementation of World of Warcraft private servers. IRC is nowhere near as complex as that. I do concede that it's a long-term effort though. It's certainly not just a "weekend project". Still as far as "saving things" go, this one is easy enough that a single person could build the tech on his free time and then you just need (a) patron(s) to pay for the infrastructure bill.
bmn__ 7y ago
> clone of IRCCloud. Easy. https://github.com/leedo/alice https://github.com/leedo/alice

swalladge 7y ago

I wonder how much work it would be to extend the IRC protocol and popular implementations to include some sort of persistence. It's such a shame that a simple, open, accessible protocol for communication is being lost simply because of this and that it's "too difficult".

the8472 7y ago
IRCv3 has history replay message types. It's there in the protocol. But it's only useful if both clients and server or proxy support it.
theclaw 7y ago
Very simple - the server can push to the client when joining a channel. This would require the channel to be logged server-side and that the user authenticates with nickserv before joining channels. It does not need client-side changes so you could still use any client.

mirkules 7y ago

Once all the chat systems without persistence have disappeared, some new hip company will come along touting “no persistence” as a feature, maybe even a privacy feature. But seriously, I don’t understand why persistence is such a huge deal to people. Chat is for transient chat - it is meant to be non-persistent just like verbal communication. There are so many mechanisms for persistent messaging (forums, text messages, emaills, and everything in between), I don’t understand how an entire industry spawned from a concept we already had?

caltelt 7y ago
I know I hate it when I join IRC channels and have no context as to what anybody has been talking about, as there is no history to quickly go over. Even just having the past days history would help in this regard, at least for more active channels. It's the same as just barging into a conversation a group of people are having. You don't want to just join and start talking about a completely different topic. So you join, and wait for a bit to get a feel for what they're talking about before piping in. But with IRC, sometimes it can take _days_ to get that amount of information, depending on how active the channel is. The same thing could easily be accomplished by being able to read the last 10 messages in the channel.
- intertextuality 7y ago
  That's where you just say "hi", regardless. Chat is transient. When I go online in Discord I don't read up the last few messages unless there's a particularly interesting discussion going on.
- Moter8 7y ago
  On snoonet at least there is a channel option frequently used, that makes the channel send the last x messages to the recently joined user. It exists.
  - voltagex_ 7y ago
    What ircd are they using?
    - buovjaga 7y ago
      InspIRCd according to this: https://ircv3.net/support/networks.html https://ircv3.net/support/networks.html
T-hawk 7y ago
Why do people use chat services? They want responses. Getting responses is what Slack and Discord are optimized for and why they've gained adoption. The chat services enable responses, by making it low friction, by giving the feel of being informal and real-time in a way that email and forums don't. They also enable asynchronous responses by being persistent, that your message won't go lost and unseen by a moment without network connectivity, unlike IRC. They also enable responses by being cross-platform and device-independent, unlike SMS. They also enable responses by centralizing account control of who participates, so users can join a ready-made group organized by an administrator, unlike say Facebook messaging. Users seek maximal interaction. The Slack/Discord model achieves this by supporting both synchronous and asynchronous responses. The former requires an informal real-time interface, the latter requires persistence. That's what came together on these services that hadn't before.

josteink 7y ago

> IRC isn't persistent (i.e. you can't read messages delivered while you were offline) It’s chat, not email. That’s a natural feature of the medium. In the age of Google, why on earth would you want to record everything?

intertextuality 7y ago
At least for me, I participate in a lot of programming channels. I've saved a lot of stuff for later, that would otherwise be a pain to ask someone to answer it again. I log basically all of my irc chats because 1. storage is cheap 2. you never know when something could be useful later Let's not pretend individual nerds in IRC chat recording history is anything remotely close to what google is doing.
- josteink 7y ago
  Thats individual logical logging. Making persistent server-logs and putting them on the web, makes them Google-creepy by default.
  - andai 7y ago
    Makes me wonder if googlebot knows how to login to Discord.

valeg 7y ago

https://thelounge.chat/ https://thelounge.chat/ is quite easy to install and provides persistence. Also, IRC channel history through Matrix bridge is persistent.

linuxftw 7y ago

Chatting isn't about always being online and getting messages. Somebody else in the channel should be capable of responding to a request. That's the whole point of a community, IMO. Need to make sure something important is captured from an IRC discussion? Put it on a wiki/mailing list. There's also things like meeting bots. Most communities I've seen, there's very little value in an IRC chat history for conversations other people had (eg, just stuff like 'help me with x').

OrgNet 7y ago

It might not be persistent by default, but there is a lot of its content that is being logged and made available on the web...

TheRealPomax 7y ago

Yep. Easy. So I assume you already did this, what's the frontend website for us to start using? (As a long time IRC user, I'd love a free irccloud with all the features of Slack and the freedom of IRC. However, setting that up scaled for "thousands of concurrent users" with normal, modern, administrator interfaces for all those tasks that the IRC RFC themselves left up to individual implementations is REALLY EFFING HARD, so no one has actually set up a service like that, to date)

norswap 7y ago
I'm part of those who don't really value "fighting for freedom via using IRC" so I use Slack & Discord. I have no stakes in saving IRC. Also, building and maintaining a free IRCCloud clone is worth much more of 5$/month of my time. And seriously, it's not that hard. I know people who master the ins and out of much more complex server stacks as a hobby. A nice example is the implementation of World of Warcraft private servers. IRC is nowhere near as complex as that. I do concede that it's a long-term effort though. It's certainly not just a "weekend project". Still as far as "saving things" go, this one is easy enough that a single person could build the tech on his free time and then you just need (a) patron(s) to pay for the infrastructure bill.

bmn__ 7y ago

> clone of IRCCloud. Easy. https://github.com/leedo/alice https://github.com/leedo/alice