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> One of the biggest problems with IRC is that there is no immediately obvious way to jump into a channel and browse or search the history. There are many solu

> One of the biggest problems with IRC is that there is no immediately obvious way to jump into a channel and browse or search the history. There are many solutions available to do this. Many channels publish chat logs publicly, which can be downloaded and searched using grep or your tool of choice. And there are web clients that can do this. > Also, because there are so many IRC clients, and so many servers out there, one person's IRC experience can vastly differ from another's. That’s rather the point of a protocol, no? IRC isn’t a platform, it’s a standardized way in which various clients and servers can communicate. Much like email, different clients support features useful for different users. > IRC also doesn't have any of the modern amenities like emoji reactions or reaction gifs, comment threads, code snippets, plug-and-play third party integrations and web hooks, profile pictures, voice/video chat, screen sharing, or any number of a plethora of other features that BOTH Slack and Discord have. I consider this a feature. I expect many others would. Constant reaction gifs / emojis / etc seem to be a distraction. I don’t believe I’ve seen these used in a way that had a positive impact on productivity, or effectiveness of communication. > If you want people to use an open source alternative to Slack or Discord, then people need to build that alternative. IRC, unfortunately, is not it (at least not in its current aged state). matrix.org / riot.im is what you want. The matrix protocol supports all of these features. Riot is an open source web client for it. I use it regularly and would recommend.

chipperyman573 7y ago
All of the things you listed are true, and you and I and most other people on HN can respect why (at least to us) these reasons stand out from slack. But a middle manager who doesn't even know what IRC stands for isn't going to want to learn the syntax for grep. They're not even going to know why they have to write \" instead of ". They want something where you can scroll up, and then your messages from two months ago are there. And that's what slack is.
- oytis 7y ago
  Yeah, but the original point was about FOSS projects. Just don't let managers into your FOSS project.
  - packetlost 7y ago
    Don't let knowledge of old * nix tools be effectively gatekeeping people from joining a FOSS project. grep is not a sufficient replacement for indexed search with fields. Just try to use Discord's search feature, you can specify constraints extremely easily. The equivalent in grep (if you even have logs going back that far) would be some gnarly regex that you have to reference what characters you need to specify unless you're very familiar with regex. IRC isn't hard, but it has real shortcoming and real problems. The user experience hasn't meaningfully changed in 20+ years, but people's expectations and how they interact with chat platforms has. This is coming from someone who uses IRC every day, both at work and at home. What we really need is most of the features of Slack without it's terrible threading mechanism and no GIFs.
    - oytis 7y ago
      Well, my experience with Slack (never tried discord really) is that it's pretty hard to find anything that is more than a week old. Slack (and IRC) is designed to exchange the information quickly and forget about it. If we need traceability then e-mail is much superior to both.
      - DenseComet 7y ago
        Discord's search feature is beautifully from what I've experienced. I can search and get snippets from months and months ago almost instantly. Good search can be done with chat, it just tends to be hard.
api_dolla 7y ago
This reminds me so much of the ‘Show HN: Dropbox’ post
- piva00 7y ago
  I have linked to that post quite a few times here in HN along the years, it is surprising for me how many times this same kind of answer pops up and I don't understand if it's lack of vision or empathy that there are people out there that want tools with better ergonomics and are willing to pay for that. Quite a few of us here work in software, of course we can just jerry-rig a lot of solutions based on existing tools, it doesn't mean it is sufficient to be a product or useful for a broader set of users...
Bnshsysjab 7y ago
Riot seemed reeeeally clunky when I tried it, which is a shame because I’m sure it’d be a decent codebase
- kixiQu 7y ago
  it's getting better all the time IMHO. The problem is that the reference back-end is in Python which isn't scaling well enough for the matrix.org instance / its rooms-- which is the only instance many people try. There's a project to implement that back-end in Golang which I expect to be a real turning point if it can get off the ground.
jobigoud 7y ago
I disagree on reaction emojis. The alternative is to leave a reaction as a new message or not react in any way. They are filling a gap between responding and ignoring. Like a head nod but with more flavors.

chipperyman573 7y ago

All of the things you listed are true, and you and I and most other people on HN can respect why (at least to us) these reasons stand out from slack. But a middle manager who doesn't even know what IRC stands for isn't going to want to learn the syntax for grep. They're not even going to know why they have to write \" instead of ". They want something where you can scroll up, and then your messages from two months ago are there. And that's what slack is.

oytis 7y ago
Yeah, but the original point was about FOSS projects. Just don't let managers into your FOSS project.
- packetlost 7y ago
  Don't let knowledge of old * nix tools be effectively gatekeeping people from joining a FOSS project. grep is not a sufficient replacement for indexed search with fields. Just try to use Discord's search feature, you can specify constraints extremely easily. The equivalent in grep (if you even have logs going back that far) would be some gnarly regex that you have to reference what characters you need to specify unless you're very familiar with regex. IRC isn't hard, but it has real shortcoming and real problems. The user experience hasn't meaningfully changed in 20+ years, but people's expectations and how they interact with chat platforms has. This is coming from someone who uses IRC every day, both at work and at home. What we really need is most of the features of Slack without it's terrible threading mechanism and no GIFs.
  - oytis 7y ago
    Well, my experience with Slack (never tried discord really) is that it's pretty hard to find anything that is more than a week old. Slack (and IRC) is designed to exchange the information quickly and forget about it. If we need traceability then e-mail is much superior to both.
    - DenseComet 7y ago
      Discord's search feature is beautifully from what I've experienced. I can search and get snippets from months and months ago almost instantly. Good search can be done with chat, it just tends to be hard.

api_dolla 7y ago

This reminds me so much of the ‘Show HN: Dropbox’ post

piva00 7y ago
I have linked to that post quite a few times here in HN along the years, it is surprising for me how many times this same kind of answer pops up and I don't understand if it's lack of vision or empathy that there are people out there that want tools with better ergonomics and are willing to pay for that. Quite a few of us here work in software, of course we can just jerry-rig a lot of solutions based on existing tools, it doesn't mean it is sufficient to be a product or useful for a broader set of users...

Bnshsysjab 7y ago

Riot seemed reeeeally clunky when I tried it, which is a shame because I’m sure it’d be a decent codebase

kixiQu 7y ago
it's getting better all the time IMHO. The problem is that the reference back-end is in Python which isn't scaling well enough for the matrix.org instance / its rooms-- which is the only instance many people try. There's a project to implement that back-end in Golang which I expect to be a real turning point if it can get off the ground.

jobigoud 7y ago

I disagree on reaction emojis. The alternative is to leave a reaction as a new message or not react in any way. They are filling a gap between responding and ignoring. Like a head nod but with more flavors.