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IRC seems like drama central. I can’t say I understand the detail of this takeover and split. But the tone of all the messages are very dramatic. Why is that?

IRC seems like drama central. I can’t say I understand the detail of this takeover and split. But the tone of all the messages are very dramatic. Why is that? Is it something inherent in the aggregated community of mods, channels and servers? Some communities seem ripe for drama and I have no idea why.

yakubin 5y ago
This is the first IRC drama I'm hearing about. There is more drama in issue trackers of random GitHub projects that surface once a month on HN. I don't know where this perception of IRC comes from. Such a comment shows up under every link commenting on the matter. But it's still just one case.
- toyg 5y ago
  > This is the first IRC drama I'm hearing about. How old are you? For my generation (40+), IRC and drama are basically synonyms. It seems to have subsumed a lot simply because younger folks don't use it as much as we did.
  - yakubin 5y ago
    23. Been using IRC on and off since I was 14.
    - dspillett 5y ago
      So since ~2012. I've not used IRC since before then so maybe things have been relatively calm in those nine years, but IRC has been around since 1988 and has a long history of drama arguably starting with the first big split in 1990. While not caring to know the details of past drama is fine, to be _completely_ unaware of it seems both rather myopic and somewhat naive IMO. Have you never taken any interest in the history of the tools you use or the Internet generally? <snark type="unneccesary" how-unneccesary="probably completely" style="hyperbole-level:calc(Godwin-2); old-man-shouting-at:clouds;">I've not been aware of any world wars since I joined the world in 1978, have any really happened?</snark>
      - yakubin 5y ago
        I didn't write that IRC was devoid of drama. I wrote it's the first one I'm hearing about. As in, know what it's about. Vaguely knowing that there probably was some drama in the past is another thing entirely. There is a lot more drama in more mainstream parts of the Internet, which is where my surprise at the mention of it comes from. I also think you're taking it too seriously. Internet drama is a relatively unimportant thing in life. Wars on the other hand... Internet drama has the importance of celebrity gossip. > Have you never taken any interest in the history of the tools you use or the Internet generally? I did take interest in the history of some of the tools. It doesn't mean I explore the history of all of them, or that this history is particularly valuable knowledge. What you learn this way is mostly just shallow trivia. E.g. knowing why strncpy works the way it works with regard to '\0' isn't knowledge that deepens your understanding of anything; it's just trivia. But sometimes it's a pleasant way to mindlessly, idly spend your time.
        dspillett 5y ago
        Fair enough, but your "first I've heard of..." comment implied (to my mind) that you considered yourself aware enough of IRCs history that you not having heard of previous matters is significant.
- sdm55 5y ago
  This comment is September in a nutshell. IRC has fragmented itself into new networks because of olines bickering with each other since the early 1990s. Look into why EFnet, Undernet, and IRCnet (and sorta DALnet) came to pass. The history you’re confused about and that everyone else accepts as fact predates your birth, is the issue. All one has to do to see that it hasn’t changed is read these logs. Something about getting an oline makes people think they’ve been cast in Othello and very serious, mortal stakes are on the line. It’s been pretty ridiculous since 1992 yet was very educational about power dynamics for a lot of young hackers (if you want to see who someone really is, oper them).
  - varjag 5y ago
    Most IRC users today were kids during the fragmentation days. It's like still complaining about 1990s AI Winter.
  - tarkin2 5y ago
    There’s something about giving someone op. It’s like the electric shock power experiment: people generally end up abusing it. This, though, doesn’t seem as pronounced in online forums. I have a lot of good memories from IRC but it did create twisted dramas full of power crazy ops who, as you say, take it all far too seriously. That seems to be the key. Every mod seemed to be charge of their own school gang. Highly concerned with their own role and power rather facilitating communities and conversation.
toyg 5y ago
IRC is inherently an extremely open and fragile protocol. It's effectively a social network, so it attracts all the drama such a network naturally generates, while doing very little to mitigate it. Low barriers to entry, easy pseudonymity, basic but pretty rigid social structures (you either got a flag or you don't)... it's just a volatile mix. In the end, it's just people bitching on the internet, with only enough features to generate more drama and no extra features to distract you from it.
at_a_remove 5y ago
I started on IRC circa ... 1990? My older handles are still in the most ancient of helpfiles. Drama is practically built into the protocol. First, last I saw, servers connected in a tree structure, so a "split" further down the tree structure, closest to the trunk, might take out quite a lot of users. Therefore, administrators closer to that trunk effectively control a larger population -- unless the admins of IRC servers toward the "leaves" connect with someone else. Second, and again I am working from old memories, there were a lot of synchronization issues, so timing attacks were quite common. Join at just the right moment, and you could take over a channel. That has probably stopped. Third, bandwidth usage can be intense as you approach the root, so most admins were originally piggybacking off of .edu connections. "My bandwidth, my rules." Fourth, the protocol has evolved in many, many different ways. Originally, bans didn't even exist, you just had to hope that if you kicked someone, they stayed gone -- forkbots took amusing advantage of this. So, too, did the server code evolve, as well as the code for numerous clients, which were often vulnerable to buffer overflows. Fifth, claim that name. NickServ had a period of not existing, so if someone wanted your nickname, flooding you off the net was an option. Whoever can DOS the most wins. Similarly, channel names were hotly contested, so combined with various attacks, you could "take over" a channel and depose people if ChanServ didn't exist -- and they didn't have bots busy re-opping them. Pulling back, you see people from server admins down to channel owners and then half-ops, each appointed by those above, scrambling for bandwidth, knowledge, and names. It's nearly designed for drama.

yakubin 5y ago

This is the first IRC drama I'm hearing about. There is more drama in issue trackers of random GitHub projects that surface once a month on HN. I don't know where this perception of IRC comes from. Such a comment shows up under every link commenting on the matter. But it's still just one case.

toyg 5y ago
> This is the first IRC drama I'm hearing about. How old are you? For my generation (40+), IRC and drama are basically synonyms. It seems to have subsumed a lot simply because younger folks don't use it as much as we did.
- yakubin 5y ago
  23. Been using IRC on and off since I was 14.
  - dspillett 5y ago
    So since ~2012. I've not used IRC since before then so maybe things have been relatively calm in those nine years, but IRC has been around since 1988 and has a long history of drama arguably starting with the first big split in 1990. While not caring to know the details of past drama is fine, to be _completely_ unaware of it seems both rather myopic and somewhat naive IMO. Have you never taken any interest in the history of the tools you use or the Internet generally? <snark type="unneccesary" how-unneccesary="probably completely" style="hyperbole-level:calc(Godwin-2); old-man-shouting-at:clouds;">I've not been aware of any world wars since I joined the world in 1978, have any really happened?</snark>
    - yakubin 5y ago
      I didn't write that IRC was devoid of drama. I wrote it's the first one I'm hearing about. As in, know what it's about. Vaguely knowing that there probably was some drama in the past is another thing entirely. There is a lot more drama in more mainstream parts of the Internet, which is where my surprise at the mention of it comes from. I also think you're taking it too seriously. Internet drama is a relatively unimportant thing in life. Wars on the other hand... Internet drama has the importance of celebrity gossip. > Have you never taken any interest in the history of the tools you use or the Internet generally? I did take interest in the history of some of the tools. It doesn't mean I explore the history of all of them, or that this history is particularly valuable knowledge. What you learn this way is mostly just shallow trivia. E.g. knowing why strncpy works the way it works with regard to '\0' isn't knowledge that deepens your understanding of anything; it's just trivia. But sometimes it's a pleasant way to mindlessly, idly spend your time.
      - dspillett 5y ago
        Fair enough, but your "first I've heard of..." comment implied (to my mind) that you considered yourself aware enough of IRCs history that you not having heard of previous matters is significant.
sdm55 5y ago
This comment is September in a nutshell. IRC has fragmented itself into new networks because of olines bickering with each other since the early 1990s. Look into why EFnet, Undernet, and IRCnet (and sorta DALnet) came to pass. The history you’re confused about and that everyone else accepts as fact predates your birth, is the issue. All one has to do to see that it hasn’t changed is read these logs. Something about getting an oline makes people think they’ve been cast in Othello and very serious, mortal stakes are on the line. It’s been pretty ridiculous since 1992 yet was very educational about power dynamics for a lot of young hackers (if you want to see who someone really is, oper them).
- varjag 5y ago
  Most IRC users today were kids during the fragmentation days. It's like still complaining about 1990s AI Winter.
- tarkin2 5y ago
  There’s something about giving someone op. It’s like the electric shock power experiment: people generally end up abusing it. This, though, doesn’t seem as pronounced in online forums. I have a lot of good memories from IRC but it did create twisted dramas full of power crazy ops who, as you say, take it all far too seriously. That seems to be the key. Every mod seemed to be charge of their own school gang. Highly concerned with their own role and power rather facilitating communities and conversation.

toyg 5y ago

IRC is inherently an extremely open and fragile protocol. It's effectively a social network, so it attracts all the drama such a network naturally generates, while doing very little to mitigate it. Low barriers to entry, easy pseudonymity, basic but pretty rigid social structures (you either got a flag or you don't)... it's just a volatile mix. In the end, it's just people bitching on the internet, with only enough features to generate more drama and no extra features to distract you from it.

at_a_remove 5y ago

I started on IRC circa ... 1990? My older handles are still in the most ancient of helpfiles. Drama is practically built into the protocol. First, last I saw, servers connected in a tree structure, so a "split" further down the tree structure, closest to the trunk, might take out quite a lot of users. Therefore, administrators closer to that trunk effectively control a larger population -- unless the admins of IRC servers toward the "leaves" connect with someone else. Second, and again I am working from old memories, there were a lot of synchronization issues, so timing attacks were quite common. Join at just the right moment, and you could take over a channel. That has probably stopped. Third, bandwidth usage can be intense as you approach the root, so most admins were originally piggybacking off of .edu connections. "My bandwidth, my rules." Fourth, the protocol has evolved in many, many different ways. Originally, bans didn't even exist, you just had to hope that if you kicked someone, they stayed gone -- forkbots took amusing advantage of this. So, too, did the server code evolve, as well as the code for numerous clients, which were often vulnerable to buffer overflows. Fifth, claim that name. NickServ had a period of not existing, so if someone wanted your nickname, flooding you off the net was an option. Whoever can DOS the most wins. Similarly, channel names were hotly contested, so combined with various attacks, you could "take over" a channel and depose people if ChanServ didn't exist -- and they didn't have bots busy re-opping them. Pulling back, you see people from server admins down to channel owners and then half-ops, each appointed by those above, scrambling for bandwidth, knowledge, and names. It's nearly designed for drama.