5 ms·

To be fair, IRC doesn't do a lot of things Slack does. Where is the logging and audit trails, access control, search, etc.

spicybright 6y ago
I'm still dreaming of a world where everyone uses IRC through an interface identical to Slack or Discord or whatever, and features like these are implemented.
- thinkmassive 6y ago
  You might appreciate matrix.org / element.io if you haven’t seen them yet
  - djsumdog 6y ago
    I setup my own Matrix homeserver recently with several bridges to all my current chat services: https://battlepenguin.com/tech/matrix-one-chat-protocol-to-rule-them-all/ https://battlepenguin.com/tech/matrix-one-chat-protocol-to-r... It works fairly well.
- dijit 6y ago
  You might like irccloud; it's a web client (similar to slack) and bouncer, with support for image uploads, has a decent app, preserving history and I think it supports search too.
- welterde 6y ago
  Not really a fan of the Slack or Discord user interface myself, but there are modern looking web clients for IRC such as thelounge[0] or kiwiirc[1] that might be what you are after. [0] https://thelounge.chat/ https://thelounge.chat/ [1] https://kiwiirc.com/ https://kiwiirc.com/
- curryst 6y ago
  I agree in principle, but IRC is a poor way to do this. I love IRC for it's simplicity, but that makes it hard to do more advanced features. It's a text-only protocol (other than DCC), so if you want to do something like allow users to click phone numbers to dial them then you have to regex it and hope for the best. Any kind of link is the same way. If you want to show images inline, you'll have to search for links, then either do another regex to see if the link is an image or prefetch the page to see if it's an image. Most servers still implement user authentication as a secondary service (i.e. it isn't part of the IRC server itself) afaik. I think the newer IRC specs include those, but support for it is missing in many servers. Really a huge part of IRC's difficulty and beauty is in not having a markup language, but most of that beauty is for the eyes of the developer, not the user. I like the concept of Matrix. That's kind of what they're trying to do by creating an open protocol, but when I looked at implementing a client it was non-trivial. For IRC, you can usually send someone a telnet log of you joining an IRC server and they could implement a client. I don't get the impression that that's true for Matrix.
  - Arathorn 6y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20948530 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20948530 is my attempt to demonstrate that implementing a Matrix client is almost as trivial as telnetting to port 6667 on an IRC server, fwiw :)
welterde 6y ago
Several IRC servers do have support for authentication and access control (and audit trails as well I suppose). Only centralized history/logging and search would need to be bolted on if needed. In the non-centralized case your IRC client takes care of all of that.
- capitainenemo 6y ago
  You might be interested in IRCv3. https://ircv3.net/irc/ https://ircv3.net/irc/ https://ircv3.net/software/servers https://ircv3.net/software/servers https://ircv3.net/software/clients https://ircv3.net/software/clients
- dkdk8283 6y ago
  Lack of logs and history is a feature not a bug.
  - JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
    For business users, there are regulatory requirements. You need to keep information around for some period of time, but not forever. History and searching is useful for spreading tribal knowledge throughout an organization.
    - welterde 6y ago
      Does that actually extend to Slack/slack-like things though? Since I would see Slack more of a replacement for phone calls or hallway discussions. Neither of which typically has any logs or recordings (and I wouldn't want to work somewhere that did keep such logs).
      - pr0zac 6y ago
        It does yes. This is why for example message history data export is a paid feature. Its a requirement for certain types of compliance.
        6y ago
ghostpepper 6y ago
At least when irc goes down you can still access your logs

spicybright 6y ago

I'm still dreaming of a world where everyone uses IRC through an interface identical to Slack or Discord or whatever, and features like these are implemented.

thinkmassive 6y ago
You might appreciate matrix.org / element.io if you haven’t seen them yet
- djsumdog 6y ago
  I setup my own Matrix homeserver recently with several bridges to all my current chat services: https://battlepenguin.com/tech/matrix-one-chat-protocol-to-rule-them-all/ https://battlepenguin.com/tech/matrix-one-chat-protocol-to-r... It works fairly well.
dijit 6y ago
You might like irccloud; it's a web client (similar to slack) and bouncer, with support for image uploads, has a decent app, preserving history and I think it supports search too.
welterde 6y ago
Not really a fan of the Slack or Discord user interface myself, but there are modern looking web clients for IRC such as thelounge[0] or kiwiirc[1] that might be what you are after. [0] https://thelounge.chat/ https://thelounge.chat/ [1] https://kiwiirc.com/ https://kiwiirc.com/
curryst 6y ago
I agree in principle, but IRC is a poor way to do this. I love IRC for it's simplicity, but that makes it hard to do more advanced features. It's a text-only protocol (other than DCC), so if you want to do something like allow users to click phone numbers to dial them then you have to regex it and hope for the best. Any kind of link is the same way. If you want to show images inline, you'll have to search for links, then either do another regex to see if the link is an image or prefetch the page to see if it's an image. Most servers still implement user authentication as a secondary service (i.e. it isn't part of the IRC server itself) afaik. I think the newer IRC specs include those, but support for it is missing in many servers. Really a huge part of IRC's difficulty and beauty is in not having a markup language, but most of that beauty is for the eyes of the developer, not the user. I like the concept of Matrix. That's kind of what they're trying to do by creating an open protocol, but when I looked at implementing a client it was non-trivial. For IRC, you can usually send someone a telnet log of you joining an IRC server and they could implement a client. I don't get the impression that that's true for Matrix.
- Arathorn 6y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20948530 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20948530 is my attempt to demonstrate that implementing a Matrix client is almost as trivial as telnetting to port 6667 on an IRC server, fwiw :)

welterde 6y ago

Several IRC servers do have support for authentication and access control (and audit trails as well I suppose). Only centralized history/logging and search would need to be bolted on if needed. In the non-centralized case your IRC client takes care of all of that.

capitainenemo 6y ago
You might be interested in IRCv3. https://ircv3.net/irc/ https://ircv3.net/irc/ https://ircv3.net/software/servers https://ircv3.net/software/servers https://ircv3.net/software/clients https://ircv3.net/software/clients
dkdk8283 6y ago
Lack of logs and history is a feature not a bug.
- JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
  For business users, there are regulatory requirements. You need to keep information around for some period of time, but not forever. History and searching is useful for spreading tribal knowledge throughout an organization.
  - welterde 6y ago
    Does that actually extend to Slack/slack-like things though? Since I would see Slack more of a replacement for phone calls or hallway discussions. Neither of which typically has any logs or recordings (and I wouldn't want to work somewhere that did keep such logs).
    - pr0zac 6y ago
      It does yes. This is why for example message history data export is a paid feature. Its a requirement for certain types of compliance.
      - 6y ago

ghostpepper 6y ago

At least when irc goes down you can still access your logs