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The biggest problem I have with IRC is its feudal social model. The first person to join a channel becomes the monarch, and can appoint deputies to impose their

by dTal 4y ago

The biggest problem I have with IRC is its feudal social model. The first person to join a channel becomes the monarch, and can appoint deputies to impose their will on the others. There's no system for dealing with an abusive op. It's all very well to say "just start your own channel then", but that's rather like telling someone to move to Canada if they don't like the president. A channel has inertia and cannot simply be "moved", especially when the person running it can simply silence anyone who raises the idea. And there's also a single global namespace - it's not feasible to found a replacement for, say, #chat.

toolz 4y ago
you can build GUIs on top of IRC that abstract away from all of this and still use the underlying protocol. I am curious what you think a better alternative would be for moderation, though. It's easy to point out flaws in all moderated systems, but it would be interesting to consider what an improvement might look like
- dTal 4y ago
  I'm not sure what you're on about with GUIs, that doesn't seem relevant to any point I was making, but to address your other point: You're basically asking for alternative systems of government to feudalism. This has been widely studied! Parliamentary democracy is a popular system. Imagine if chanops were chosen by election.
  - toolz 4y ago
    when would elections be held? after N number of new people join? How would you prevent rigged elections with many bots joining to represent many votes for 1 person? Other forms of governance are in wide abundance, but implementing them on top of pseudo-anonymous chatrooms is hard and could lead to mostly benefiting malicious actors. the GUI is relevant in addressing duplicate channel names as underneath you could have UUID channels that mapped to channels named "chat" for the end user.
beardedwizard 4y ago
Sure there is, run your own network, servers and channels, have better content and attract users. You can have as many #chat channels as you want, and run them as you see fit. Anyone can run an irc server, and it does not have to appeal or cater to everyone.
- dTal 4y ago
  i.e. "move to Canada". That is not helpful. Even if I did set up an alternative network, it would have the same issue - a broken social model, enforced at the technical level. That's assuming I could persuade a critical mass of people to use the new network. "Have better content"? An IRC network has no "content", it has users. Talking to other users is the point. How many IRC networks are there?
  - mmmmklllljgd 4y ago
    Every website has the social model you just described. You'll have to start with a decentralized protocol without server admins (the true monarchs) to get around what you're describing. This website has dang. Slack has channel owners. Reddit has mods and admins. 4chan has janitors and admins. Flat forums had mods IRC is the same as everything else. It's a fine thing to point out, it's just not unique to IRC in any way
    - rektide 4y ago
      > You'll have to start with a decentralized protocol without server admins This is all or nothing thinking. We could design centralized protocols that have, for example, voting. We could design centralized protocols that call together digital juries[1]. Yes there may be powerhungry mods at the very top. They might be able to throw the votes or what not. Abuse is possible on centralized systems. But there's so vastly much we could be trying, could be doing, to alter the gerontocratic imbalance of power, even on centralized systems. [1] http://digitaljuries.com/ http://digitaljuries.com/
      - antris 4y ago
tenebrisalietum 4y ago
These problems exist with any social network. The IRCops of most major IRC servers are very hands off - they will not get involved in user disputes at all unless the IRC server itself is in danger. However, you get kicked out of a Discord server or Facebook group, you're in the same situation, and Discord/Facebook isn't going to help you most of the time unless the group is violating TOS. Most IRC server's TOS are very liberal because the IRC server itself doesn't really store any data other than possibly some actual chat text - it doesn't hold images, files, etc. > And there's also a single global namespace - it's not feasible to found a replacement for, say, #chat. With modern IRC services you can actually create "neutral" lobby-type channels that have the services daemon as the op. But unless you run your own chat server or social media service you'll always be at the mercy of who runs it at least a little bit.
welterde 4y ago
IRC also supports anarchism with + channels that simply have no modes and no ops (also no topic which is slightly annoying) but then you are kinda at the mercy of the network admins to stop the spammers (as well as liberal use of /ignore to ignore spammers). Also some channels just give every non-spammer ops, which kinda also solves the power corrupts issue.

by dTal 4y ago

toolz 4y ago

you can build GUIs on top of IRC that abstract away from all of this and still use the underlying protocol. I am curious what you think a better alternative would be for moderation, though. It's easy to point out flaws in all moderated systems, but it would be interesting to consider what an improvement might look like

dTal 4y ago
I'm not sure what you're on about with GUIs, that doesn't seem relevant to any point I was making, but to address your other point: You're basically asking for alternative systems of government to feudalism. This has been widely studied! Parliamentary democracy is a popular system. Imagine if chanops were chosen by election.
- toolz 4y ago
  when would elections be held? after N number of new people join? How would you prevent rigged elections with many bots joining to represent many votes for 1 person? Other forms of governance are in wide abundance, but implementing them on top of pseudo-anonymous chatrooms is hard and could lead to mostly benefiting malicious actors. the GUI is relevant in addressing duplicate channel names as underneath you could have UUID channels that mapped to channels named "chat" for the end user.

beardedwizard 4y ago

Sure there is, run your own network, servers and channels, have better content and attract users. You can have as many #chat channels as you want, and run them as you see fit. Anyone can run an irc server, and it does not have to appeal or cater to everyone.

dTal 4y ago
i.e. "move to Canada". That is not helpful. Even if I did set up an alternative network, it would have the same issue - a broken social model, enforced at the technical level. That's assuming I could persuade a critical mass of people to use the new network. "Have better content"? An IRC network has no "content", it has users. Talking to other users is the point. How many IRC networks are there?
- mmmmklllljgd 4y ago
  Every website has the social model you just described. You'll have to start with a decentralized protocol without server admins (the true monarchs) to get around what you're describing. This website has dang. Slack has channel owners. Reddit has mods and admins. 4chan has janitors and admins. Flat forums had mods IRC is the same as everything else. It's a fine thing to point out, it's just not unique to IRC in any way
  - rektide 4y ago
    > You'll have to start with a decentralized protocol without server admins This is all or nothing thinking. We could design centralized protocols that have, for example, voting. We could design centralized protocols that call together digital juries[1]. Yes there may be powerhungry mods at the very top. They might be able to throw the votes or what not. Abuse is possible on centralized systems. But there's so vastly much we could be trying, could be doing, to alter the gerontocratic imbalance of power, even on centralized systems. [1] http://digitaljuries.com/ http://digitaljuries.com/
    - antris 4y ago

tenebrisalietum 4y ago

These problems exist with any social network. The IRCops of most major IRC servers are very hands off - they will not get involved in user disputes at all unless the IRC server itself is in danger. However, you get kicked out of a Discord server or Facebook group, you're in the same situation, and Discord/Facebook isn't going to help you most of the time unless the group is violating TOS. Most IRC server's TOS are very liberal because the IRC server itself doesn't really store any data other than possibly some actual chat text - it doesn't hold images, files, etc. > And there's also a single global namespace - it's not feasible to found a replacement for, say, #chat. With modern IRC services you can actually create "neutral" lobby-type channels that have the services daemon as the op. But unless you run your own chat server or social media service you'll always be at the mercy of who runs it at least a little bit.

welterde 4y ago

IRC also supports anarchism with + channels that simply have no modes and no ops (also no topic which is slightly annoying) but then you are kinda at the mercy of the network admins to stop the spammers (as well as liberal use of /ignore to ignore spammers). Also some channels just give every non-spammer ops, which kinda also solves the power corrupts issue.