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Discord is really IRC with a prettier skin. All the weird technical stuff you'll see on IRC you'll also find on Discord. Discord has some additional features, b

Discord is really IRC with a prettier skin. All the weird technical stuff you'll see on IRC you'll also find on Discord. Discord has some additional features, but those are on top of the existing IRCisms, making it actually harder for a newbie to get on board. But you know, people aren't that stupid, they figure things out -like they did in the 90s with IRC- because they want to join the community. Back in late 90s/early 2000s, netcafes were full with non-technical people who used Internet just because of mIRC (many called it just "mIRC") to chat with others. We're talking about people who barely knew the difference between a file and a folder and yet became proficient enough with mIRC to simultaneously chat in several channels. The #1 issue isn't technical, it is social. People do not join Discord because it is better than IRC/Matrix/whatever, they join it because the communities they want to be part of are on Discord.

dralley 5y ago
It isn't, though... connecting to a new Discord group is basically a one-step operation. Connecting to a new IRC server might require some setup of the server, and possibly registration with Nickserv, which is a bot pretending to be a user that you interact with via /msg. And you need to connect to individual channels, and there's often no good way of sorting them by purpose rather than by what server they're present on, something that most users probably don't care about. I use IRC every day, but I'm not going to pretend it's straightforwards compared to the alternatives. It absolutely is not.
- badsectoracula 5y ago
  None of those things are showstoppers or really anything more than tiny issues - if they are issues at all. You do not need to register with nickserv (it is optional if you want to be a regular and not have someone else take your name) and the commands aren't any different than all the commands that Discord has (some are even the same) - hell, pretty much every other Discord server/channel has IRC-like botcommands that begin with a ! like you'd find on IRC in 1996. Also i'm not pretending that IRC is straightforward, i'm saying that Discord is as complex as IRC is and adds additional complexity on top of that - sure, some parts might be simpler (though connecting to a new server is not necessarily among them as most IRC clients register the irc: handler with browsers so you can click on any web link to join a server and enter a channel) but those do not negate the complex parts it adds. And the most important part: the vast majority of people do not use use Discord because it is easier (or harder or whatever) than IRC (or Matrix or whatever), they use it because the communities they want to be part of are on Discord.

dralley 5y ago

It isn't, though... connecting to a new Discord group is basically a one-step operation. Connecting to a new IRC server might require some setup of the server, and possibly registration with Nickserv, which is a bot pretending to be a user that you interact with via /msg. And you need to connect to individual channels, and there's often no good way of sorting them by purpose rather than by what server they're present on, something that most users probably don't care about. I use IRC every day, but I'm not going to pretend it's straightforwards compared to the alternatives. It absolutely is not.

badsectoracula 5y ago
None of those things are showstoppers or really anything more than tiny issues - if they are issues at all. You do not need to register with nickserv (it is optional if you want to be a regular and not have someone else take your name) and the commands aren't any different than all the commands that Discord has (some are even the same) - hell, pretty much every other Discord server/channel has IRC-like botcommands that begin with a ! like you'd find on IRC in 1996. Also i'm not pretending that IRC is straightforward, i'm saying that Discord is as complex as IRC is and adds additional complexity on top of that - sure, some parts might be simpler (though connecting to a new server is not necessarily among them as most IRC clients register the irc: handler with browsers so you can click on any web link to join a server and enter a channel) but those do not negate the complex parts it adds. And the most important part: the vast majority of people do not use use Discord because it is easier (or harder or whatever) than IRC (or Matrix or whatever), they use it because the communities they want to be part of are on Discord.