IRC may be simple but there were massive amounts of pain back in the early days. If you joined a server that was temporarily disconnected from a peer, you coul

IRC may be simple but there were massive amounts of pain back in the early days. If you joined a server that was temporarily disconnected from a peer, you could get operator status on an empty channel that then carried over when the server reconnected to the larger network. Chanserv/Nickserv are bolted on solutions for any kind of permanence. Messages delivered late are not recognizably late. There’s no threading etc. What I thought worked remarkably well, however, was the loose structure formed by students/employees who were in charge of their university or ISP hosted server. They weren’t given heavy scrutiny but still had some accountability to a larger organization. It somehow bridged the gap between complete independence and central control.