5 ms·

I remember IRC in the late 90s, early 2000s having A LOT (like 9 out of 10) of people who otherwise had no idea about computers (remember droves of people disco

by Crinus 7y ago

I remember IRC in the late 90s, early 2000s having A LOT (like 9 out of 10) of people who otherwise had no idea about computers (remember droves of people disconnecting after 'Press Alt+F4 to get @'?). People who didn't knew the difference between a file and a directory (or folder) were on IRC with channels having hundreds of people. If someone can figure out Facebook (and trust me, Facebook is far from intuitive for someone who doesn't know) or any other web-based service, they can figure out IRC. The main reason people do not use IRC much nowadays is that other people moved off IRC to Facebook and other social places. It isn't a technical thing, it is mainly a social thing.

fenwick67 7y ago
Your point about Facebook is spot on, if you have never used it before it's a nightmare
- Fnoord 7y ago
  Especially hardening all the default settings to more privacy minded ones.
wlesieutre 7y ago
Lack of conversation persistence is a real problem. It's 2019 and people expect to have it. If messages disappear into the ether while I'm not actively connected to the room, it's not going to work for participating in a group conversation. Yeah you can set up some always-connected relay on a server and bounce your client through it to still get the conversation backlog when you weren't online, but it's not reasonable to expect an average computer user even have an always-connected machine to run it on, let alone actually get a relay working. If they can use Facebook they could use IRCCloud, but that's $5/month and Messenger/WhatsApp/Discord/Slack are free.
- nixpulvis 7y ago
  Well that's the whole idea behind Snapchat, but I get your point. Sometimes I wish I didn't have so many messages saved forever tho, honestly.
  - wlesieutre 7y ago
    Not just persistence in terms of "exists after I read it", but in terms of getting the messages at all. When someone sends you a snap while you don't have snapchat open, you get a push notification about it and the message is waiting on the server for you to read it. In IRC, anything that happens while you don't have an active session just doesn't exist. That might work for some communities, like programming language groups where I can hop in, talk about something with whoever's online, and hop back off. But if I'm chatting with my friends and we're trying to make plans for the weekend, everyone really needs to see that conversation regardless of whether they have the client running right this second.
    - ggg2 7y ago
      almost every single irc server since 94 or so have some sort of logger. if not, it's an intentional design choice for that one community.
      - hombre_fatal 7y ago
        You're suggesting people scour logs for missed messages as if that's seriously your pitch for "IRC has that, too." This is exactly why people who are pro-IRC are watching the sun set on IRC and they don't have a flaming clue why beyond condescending suspicions like "it's the users who are idiots."
        lapinot 7y ago
        Maybe september is starting to end?
    - nixpulvis 7y ago
      Well yea, it's a sad fact that IRC requires a client side server running something like ZNC to work as needed. IRC is great in many, many ways, but this is a fundamental flaw. It's nice there are solutions, but they are technical, require hosting, and aren't perfect. Other chat protocols fix this but lack the base, and are having trouble competing against the likes of Slack or iMessage in different use cases for example. I'm excited to see how Purism's Librem 5 is going to play out with matrix as it's primary communications platform.
- Crinus 7y ago
  Yeah sure, conversation persistence is neat although personally i do not consider a must have. Regardless, my comment was really about how "noob friendly" IRC was/is.
  - wlesieutre 7y ago
    Agreed, it's not that hard to use. But it's worse than other free solutions in some important ways, so whether people can use it matters less than whether they'll bother to. As far as I can tell it'll continue to exist for communities that are on it, or maybe for new ones that are deliberately trying to select for the kind of person who's willing to deal with IRC's limitations. Those are both perfectly valid cases, not everything needs to be aimed at mass market adoption. But beyond those groups, there are lots of nicer services that most people would prefer to use for one reason or another. And even if the self-hosted and/or free software leaning groups, Matrix looks more promising looking forward.
Skunkleton 7y ago
> Facebook is far from intuitive for someone who doesn't know. I am a 30-somthing software engineer who doesn't use facebook. The few times I have tried it out it was indeed incredibly confusing.

by Crinus 7y ago

fenwick67 7y ago

Your point about Facebook is spot on, if you have never used it before it's a nightmare

Fnoord 7y ago
Especially hardening all the default settings to more privacy minded ones.

wlesieutre 7y ago

Lack of conversation persistence is a real problem. It's 2019 and people expect to have it. If messages disappear into the ether while I'm not actively connected to the room, it's not going to work for participating in a group conversation. Yeah you can set up some always-connected relay on a server and bounce your client through it to still get the conversation backlog when you weren't online, but it's not reasonable to expect an average computer user even have an always-connected machine to run it on, let alone actually get a relay working. If they can use Facebook they could use IRCCloud, but that's $5/month and Messenger/WhatsApp/Discord/Slack are free.

nixpulvis 7y ago
Well that's the whole idea behind Snapchat, but I get your point. Sometimes I wish I didn't have so many messages saved forever tho, honestly.
- wlesieutre 7y ago
  Not just persistence in terms of "exists after I read it", but in terms of getting the messages at all. When someone sends you a snap while you don't have snapchat open, you get a push notification about it and the message is waiting on the server for you to read it. In IRC, anything that happens while you don't have an active session just doesn't exist. That might work for some communities, like programming language groups where I can hop in, talk about something with whoever's online, and hop back off. But if I'm chatting with my friends and we're trying to make plans for the weekend, everyone really needs to see that conversation regardless of whether they have the client running right this second.
  - ggg2 7y ago
    almost every single irc server since 94 or so have some sort of logger. if not, it's an intentional design choice for that one community.
    - hombre_fatal 7y ago
      You're suggesting people scour logs for missed messages as if that's seriously your pitch for "IRC has that, too." This is exactly why people who are pro-IRC are watching the sun set on IRC and they don't have a flaming clue why beyond condescending suspicions like "it's the users who are idiots."
      - lapinot 7y ago
        Maybe september is starting to end?
  - nixpulvis 7y ago
    Well yea, it's a sad fact that IRC requires a client side server running something like ZNC to work as needed. IRC is great in many, many ways, but this is a fundamental flaw. It's nice there are solutions, but they are technical, require hosting, and aren't perfect. Other chat protocols fix this but lack the base, and are having trouble competing against the likes of Slack or iMessage in different use cases for example. I'm excited to see how Purism's Librem 5 is going to play out with matrix as it's primary communications platform.
Crinus 7y ago
Yeah sure, conversation persistence is neat although personally i do not consider a must have. Regardless, my comment was really about how "noob friendly" IRC was/is.
- wlesieutre 7y ago
  Agreed, it's not that hard to use. But it's worse than other free solutions in some important ways, so whether people can use it matters less than whether they'll bother to. As far as I can tell it'll continue to exist for communities that are on it, or maybe for new ones that are deliberately trying to select for the kind of person who's willing to deal with IRC's limitations. Those are both perfectly valid cases, not everything needs to be aimed at mass market adoption. But beyond those groups, there are lots of nicer services that most people would prefer to use for one reason or another. And even if the self-hosted and/or free software leaning groups, Matrix looks more promising looking forward.

Skunkleton 7y ago

> Facebook is far from intuitive for someone who doesn't know. I am a 30-somthing software engineer who doesn't use facebook. The few times I have tried it out it was indeed incredibly confusing.