5 ms·

Not much news at all, really. More of a roundup of popular clients and utilities. I suppose that's a reflection of the state of the IRC ecosystem, which is sta

by na85 5y ago

Not much news at all, really. More of a roundup of popular clients and utilities. I suppose that's a reflection of the state of the IRC ecosystem, which is stagnant and slowly dying. The ircv3 project, while well-intentioned, will never result in the revitalization of IRC. I really like IRC but the ux story is pretty bad by modern standards. Users expect seamless multi device sync, for one. You can achieve a poor facsimile of this with a bnc and a shell account but it's not a great experience. It's little wonder to me that discord and slack have eaten IRC's lunch, sadly.

progval 5y ago
> I suppose that's a reflection of the state of the IRC ecosystem, which is stagnant and slowly dying. I see it as mature rather than stagnant. I like my client to remain mostly the same over years so it doesn't disrupt me every time a developer changes something. > Users expect seamless multi device sync, for one. You can achieve a poor facsimile of this with a bnc and a shell account but it's not a great experience. Ergo (an IRC server) has it built-in: https://github.com/ergochat/ergo/blob/master/docs/USERGUIDE.md#always-on https://github.com/ergochat/ergo/blob/master/docs/USERGUIDE....
- na85 5y ago
  Awesome. Are any networks running ergo in production? My experience has been that most IRCops are very much of the change-averse nature.
  - progval 5y ago
    There is the flagship ergo.chat network, and a bunch of small networks. A total of 118 networks according to https://www.ircstats.org/servers https://www.ircstats.org/servers (based on scanning the IPv4 address space on ports 6667 and 6697. Note that, despite being a census of servers, Ergo can't federated, so 1 server = 1 network for Ergo) > My experience has been that most IRCops are very much of the change-averse nature. True. Ergo in particular changes the IRC paradigm, so some old-timers don't like it very much. As far as I know, Ergo deployments are all brand-new networks
    - tw04 5y ago
      > Ergo can't federated, so 1 server = 1 network for Ergo) I guess I qualify as an old timer even though I’m not that old then. If you can’t federate servers I don’t think it should be called IRC. It might be using the same protocol, but it’s something else.
      - progval 5y ago
        Why? It doesn't make any difference for users. These days, IRC federation is only used to scale horizontally, and sadly, IRC networks doesn't need to scale over 100k concurrent users anymore.
        tw04 5y ago
        Part of what made irc, irc is that it was decentralized. A single server breaks the entire premise of IRC. EFNet literally could not exist if it weren’t decentralized.
yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
> I suppose that's a reflection of the state of the IRC ecosystem, which is stagnant and slowly dying. It's stable, yes. Some of us like a slow-paced ecosystem. > I really like IRC but the ux story is pretty bad by modern standards. Users expect seamless multi device sync, for one. You can achieve a poor facsimile of this with a bnc and a shell account but it's not a great experience. Any bouncer will work, and there are even web clients that serve that role as well. Although, yes, it's higher friction than some alternatives. > It's little wonder to me that discord and slack have eaten IRC's lunch, sadly. Yes, the ease of use and feature differences do often favor alternatives; I'm hoping Matrix becomes the preferred replacement.
- na85 5y ago
  >Any bouncer will work Any bouncer is one step too many.
Casteil 5y ago
>stagnant and slowly dying As Progval noted, this is more maturity than stagnation/death... Not all software needs to have more things continuously added to remain useful. > Users expect seamless multi device sync, for one. You can achieve a poor facsimile of this with a bnc and a shell account but it's not a great experience. I'd highly recommend TheLounge since it does this extremely well. For a given login (which can be connected to any number of IRC networks/channels), it'll have the same state across all sessions/devices (including private messages), without needing a special client for the device. Being a webapp, it can also be used on any work PC/device with a browser & internet connectivity. > It's little wonder to me that discord and slack have eaten IRC's lunch, sadly. Frankly, I've found Discord to be largely full of children and trolls.
- na85 5y ago
  >TheLounge That's the problem. Your best recommendation is to sign up for a third party service just to use IRC. That's awful UX.
  - doix 5y ago
    IRC is a protocol, not a service. The alternative discussed is slack/discord, where you sign up to use their service. You can pretend that TheLounge is IRC and then it's just the same as slack/discord from a user's perspective. I don't see why that's horrible UX. I keep an irssi session running inside a screen session on my server and SSH into it to use IRC. Since IRC is a protocol, not a service tied to a specific client, I have that option. I can't do that (easily) with slack/discord. I consider slack/discord to have shit ux because I'm forced to use their bloated clients that waste tons of screen real estate.
  - genericacct 5y ago
    TheLounge is not a third party service, it's software you can run on your own machine. Works pretty well and the UX is slick.
u801e 5y ago
> [IRC's] ux story is pretty bad by modern standards UX is entirely dependent on the client. And there are issues with modern UX standards that result in browser tabs using an entire core of CPU resources and/or allocating enough memory that the device becomes unresponsive. The other issue is the inconsistent UI. Automatic updates result in users having to learn a different way to accomplish what they need to do without prior warning or a way to opt out of the change. Slack did this a few years ago where markup no longer worked the way it had before[1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21589647 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21589647
- progval 5y ago
  > UX is entirely dependent on the client. Not entirely. Some features cannot be implemented without help from the protocol, like this extension to fetch history: https://ircv3.net/specs/extensions/chathistory https://ircv3.net/specs/extensions/chathistory
  - BeefWellington 5y ago
    IRC just operates differently than discord or slack do. In the olden days, people just had large log files for their IRC clients stored locally, understanding that disconnected time = time you weren't logging. A lot of existing IRC users would probably view the ability to fetch complete channel chat history as an anti-feature.
  - u801e 5y ago
    Typically this was something that was handled locally by the client by logging messages sent to channels you were in. The concept of having all messages on a central server to pull down actually makes certain actions more difficult. For instance, pressing PgUp several times or just scrolling up to see what was said some time ago in Slack takes quite a bit of time because it has to pull down data from the server rather than relying on local storage. Same thing with using something like ctrl-f to find a certain phrase you saw in the channel some time ago. Slack, for example, requires you to go through several dialogs to formulate your search terms, and by default, returns results in channels you never were in, and won't filter them out until you select just the channels you want.
ReactiveJelly 5y ago
> It's little wonder to me that discord and slack have eaten IRC's lunch, sadly. Discord and Slack have the great advantage of being freemium proprietary software that don't have to inter-operate with any software not written by their own companies. They're paid more to hit a much easier target. I'll never be surprised when well-funded projects outperform volunteer-run projects. Even the Linux kernel is funded by different entities. How do you feel about Matrix and some of the other new-age FOSS chat systems?
- fart32 5y ago
  > Discord and Slack have the great advantage of being freemium proprietary software that don't have to inter-operate with any software not written by their own companies. While that indeed is an advantage, it's not why they're dominant, and I'm not sure it's simply a question of funding either. Let's be honest, compared to IRC, Discord and Slack are very easy to use. All it takes to join a server is clicking a link. IRC protocol is just as old as me, and I, to this day, remember the struggle as a kid of joining empty channels before finally understanding the concept of networks. Back in the day, you'd need a special friend with ZNC to be the cool kid. Since then, audience has changed dramatically and most people don't even know what "protocol" means. IRC just doesn't offer what it takes to get everyone on board.
  - rhizome 5y ago
    You don't need everyone unless you're trying to IPO. For instance, it's not hard to slap mature GUI clients on company laptops to access a company IRCd. You can even use emoji!
    - Kye 5y ago
      A huge improvement over how Microsoft Comic Chat emotions appeared on other IRC clients.
    - dmitriid 5y ago
      > For instance, it's not hard to slap mature GUI clients on company laptops to access a company IRCd And which mature client would that be? And which clients would work for Linux laptops, and MacOS laptops, and Windows laptops? And also company-issued Android phones and iPhones? And who would be maintaining the servers for IRC with all the necessary things to make it meet expectations in the modern world?
rhizome 5y ago
In an industry where Wordpress plugins and JavaScript frameworks buy people their houses, the ideas of stability and stationary targets become negative attributes.

by na85 5y ago

progval 5y ago

> I suppose that's a reflection of the state of the IRC ecosystem, which is stagnant and slowly dying. I see it as mature rather than stagnant. I like my client to remain mostly the same over years so it doesn't disrupt me every time a developer changes something. > Users expect seamless multi device sync, for one. You can achieve a poor facsimile of this with a bnc and a shell account but it's not a great experience. Ergo (an IRC server) has it built-in: https://github.com/ergochat/ergo/blob/master/docs/USERGUIDE.md#always-on https://github.com/ergochat/ergo/blob/master/docs/USERGUIDE....

na85 5y ago
Awesome. Are any networks running ergo in production? My experience has been that most IRCops are very much of the change-averse nature.
- progval 5y ago
  There is the flagship ergo.chat network, and a bunch of small networks. A total of 118 networks according to https://www.ircstats.org/servers https://www.ircstats.org/servers (based on scanning the IPv4 address space on ports 6667 and 6697. Note that, despite being a census of servers, Ergo can't federated, so 1 server = 1 network for Ergo) > My experience has been that most IRCops are very much of the change-averse nature. True. Ergo in particular changes the IRC paradigm, so some old-timers don't like it very much. As far as I know, Ergo deployments are all brand-new networks
  - tw04 5y ago
    > Ergo can't federated, so 1 server = 1 network for Ergo) I guess I qualify as an old timer even though I’m not that old then. If you can’t federate servers I don’t think it should be called IRC. It might be using the same protocol, but it’s something else.
    - progval 5y ago
      Why? It doesn't make any difference for users. These days, IRC federation is only used to scale horizontally, and sadly, IRC networks doesn't need to scale over 100k concurrent users anymore.
      - tw04 5y ago
        Part of what made irc, irc is that it was decentralized. A single server breaks the entire premise of IRC. EFNet literally could not exist if it weren’t decentralized.

yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago

> I suppose that's a reflection of the state of the IRC ecosystem, which is stagnant and slowly dying. It's stable, yes. Some of us like a slow-paced ecosystem. > I really like IRC but the ux story is pretty bad by modern standards. Users expect seamless multi device sync, for one. You can achieve a poor facsimile of this with a bnc and a shell account but it's not a great experience. Any bouncer will work, and there are even web clients that serve that role as well. Although, yes, it's higher friction than some alternatives. > It's little wonder to me that discord and slack have eaten IRC's lunch, sadly. Yes, the ease of use and feature differences do often favor alternatives; I'm hoping Matrix becomes the preferred replacement.

na85 5y ago
>Any bouncer will work Any bouncer is one step too many.

Casteil 5y ago

>stagnant and slowly dying As Progval noted, this is more maturity than stagnation/death... Not all software needs to have more things continuously added to remain useful. > Users expect seamless multi device sync, for one. You can achieve a poor facsimile of this with a bnc and a shell account but it's not a great experience. I'd highly recommend TheLounge since it does this extremely well. For a given login (which can be connected to any number of IRC networks/channels), it'll have the same state across all sessions/devices (including private messages), without needing a special client for the device. Being a webapp, it can also be used on any work PC/device with a browser & internet connectivity. > It's little wonder to me that discord and slack have eaten IRC's lunch, sadly. Frankly, I've found Discord to be largely full of children and trolls.

na85 5y ago
>TheLounge That's the problem. Your best recommendation is to sign up for a third party service just to use IRC. That's awful UX.
- doix 5y ago
  IRC is a protocol, not a service. The alternative discussed is slack/discord, where you sign up to use their service. You can pretend that TheLounge is IRC and then it's just the same as slack/discord from a user's perspective. I don't see why that's horrible UX. I keep an irssi session running inside a screen session on my server and SSH into it to use IRC. Since IRC is a protocol, not a service tied to a specific client, I have that option. I can't do that (easily) with slack/discord. I consider slack/discord to have shit ux because I'm forced to use their bloated clients that waste tons of screen real estate.
- genericacct 5y ago
  TheLounge is not a third party service, it's software you can run on your own machine. Works pretty well and the UX is slick.

u801e 5y ago

> [IRC's] ux story is pretty bad by modern standards UX is entirely dependent on the client. And there are issues with modern UX standards that result in browser tabs using an entire core of CPU resources and/or allocating enough memory that the device becomes unresponsive. The other issue is the inconsistent UI. Automatic updates result in users having to learn a different way to accomplish what they need to do without prior warning or a way to opt out of the change. Slack did this a few years ago where markup no longer worked the way it had before[1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21589647 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21589647

progval 5y ago
> UX is entirely dependent on the client. Not entirely. Some features cannot be implemented without help from the protocol, like this extension to fetch history: https://ircv3.net/specs/extensions/chathistory https://ircv3.net/specs/extensions/chathistory
- BeefWellington 5y ago
  IRC just operates differently than discord or slack do. In the olden days, people just had large log files for their IRC clients stored locally, understanding that disconnected time = time you weren't logging. A lot of existing IRC users would probably view the ability to fetch complete channel chat history as an anti-feature.
- u801e 5y ago
  Typically this was something that was handled locally by the client by logging messages sent to channels you were in. The concept of having all messages on a central server to pull down actually makes certain actions more difficult. For instance, pressing PgUp several times or just scrolling up to see what was said some time ago in Slack takes quite a bit of time because it has to pull down data from the server rather than relying on local storage. Same thing with using something like ctrl-f to find a certain phrase you saw in the channel some time ago. Slack, for example, requires you to go through several dialogs to formulate your search terms, and by default, returns results in channels you never were in, and won't filter them out until you select just the channels you want.

ReactiveJelly 5y ago

> It's little wonder to me that discord and slack have eaten IRC's lunch, sadly. Discord and Slack have the great advantage of being freemium proprietary software that don't have to inter-operate with any software not written by their own companies. They're paid more to hit a much easier target. I'll never be surprised when well-funded projects outperform volunteer-run projects. Even the Linux kernel is funded by different entities. How do you feel about Matrix and some of the other new-age FOSS chat systems?

fart32 5y ago
> Discord and Slack have the great advantage of being freemium proprietary software that don't have to inter-operate with any software not written by their own companies. While that indeed is an advantage, it's not why they're dominant, and I'm not sure it's simply a question of funding either. Let's be honest, compared to IRC, Discord and Slack are very easy to use. All it takes to join a server is clicking a link. IRC protocol is just as old as me, and I, to this day, remember the struggle as a kid of joining empty channels before finally understanding the concept of networks. Back in the day, you'd need a special friend with ZNC to be the cool kid. Since then, audience has changed dramatically and most people don't even know what "protocol" means. IRC just doesn't offer what it takes to get everyone on board.
- rhizome 5y ago
  You don't need everyone unless you're trying to IPO. For instance, it's not hard to slap mature GUI clients on company laptops to access a company IRCd. You can even use emoji!
  - Kye 5y ago
    A huge improvement over how Microsoft Comic Chat emotions appeared on other IRC clients.
  - dmitriid 5y ago
    > For instance, it's not hard to slap mature GUI clients on company laptops to access a company IRCd And which mature client would that be? And which clients would work for Linux laptops, and MacOS laptops, and Windows laptops? And also company-issued Android phones and iPhones? And who would be maintaining the servers for IRC with all the necessary things to make it meet expectations in the modern world?

rhizome 5y ago

In an industry where Wordpress plugins and JavaScript frameworks buy people their houses, the ideas of stability and stationary targets become negative attributes.