> What's wrong with XMPP multi-user chat? I was speaking more generally than XMPP. I don't know the fundamental causes, but I haven't seen group/multi-user cha

> What's wrong with XMPP multi-user chat? I was speaking more generally than XMPP. I don't know the fundamental causes, but I haven't seen group/multi-user chat work reliably in years -- I think the last time I did, everybody was on ICQ using official clients. The problems I have encountered are: 1) Group chats just don't start. 2) Not everyone can see/"hear" everyone else. 3) Rarely, #2 starting and stopping randomly for people. I've seen these behaviors on chats with as few as 3 people, up to 8ish (don't think I've ever gone higher than that). I doubt the protocols are fundamentally broken in this regard, I assume I'm encountering implementation bugs, but they seem to be pervasive. > And I don't understand your argument of "incompletely-routed", especially if compared to IRC. "incompletely-routed" may not be a good phrase to use here, least of all because not many people "get" IRC anymore. IRC networks eventually stabilized into a model whereby there was network-wide coordination of routing. Every server on a network can talk to every other server, and there is no leakage outside of the network. You know what you're getting when you connect to one of the major networks. With IM, links may be established between A and B, and B and C, but not A and C. > imho XMPP federation is much more powerful concept than IRC networking. I would absolutely agree in so far as the intent of XMPP federation goes. In practice, there are two problems: 1) Some IM providers intentionally cripple it (e.g. Facebook). 2) Not all IM providers use XMPP in the first place. Even some of the ones that make available a limited XMPP interface don't actually base their services off of it (Facebook, Microsoft). It's important to realize that IM is not the same as XMPP, so when I say "IM", I mean "IM", not the XMPP subclass. :)