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Man, I wish I still knew people on IRC… Whenever I see a link to Discord I let out a deep sigh. We had it all and we blew it! We threw it all away for gifs and

by smodo 3y ago

Man, I wish I still knew people on IRC… Whenever I see a link to Discord I let out a deep sigh. We had it all and we blew it! We threw it all away for gifs and centralization! So here’s a question: if I download this, what’s a good place to hang out? PS I’ve never used this Ui toolkit (being an egui man myself) but that panel snapping looks amazing!

culinary-robot 3y ago
Iced is awesome. Slightly biased being a contributed though :) I would recommend https://libera.chat/ https://libera.chat/. There are a ton of great channels: ##rust, #linux, #networking, #security to mention a few.
TkTech 3y ago
There are many, many IRC networks that are still very active with tens of thousands of active users. Libera.chat is probably the best one I can suggest at the moment for a wide selection of topics. Politics, news, every tech group and subject under the sun, etc... I've run https://n.tkte.ch/ https://n.tkte.ch/ for the last decade and it's bots are currently connected to over 200 unique, active IRC servers. Still very much alive!
tcmart14 3y ago
No kidding. I miss IRC. I still use it, but yea, its mostly silence. About the only time I've seen interaction is on something like #fedora or #freebsd where people just ask support type questions.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
542458 3y ago
> We threw it all away for gifs and centralization! Simpler configuration, easy voice chat and screen share, simpler administration, user accounts and profile pictures by default, visually appealing and more noob-friendly client, persistent chat history, media embeds, file uploads, rich presence, etc...
- floren 3y ago
  IRCv3 ticks a lot of boxes server-side; you get chat history, user accounts (you can even log with the same nick from multiple clients), replies, and a bunch of other stuff. Some clients show link/image previews. I think the #1 thing that would make them better would be configuration options to drag&drop/paste images and other files, and have those automatically uploaded to a user-configured service with a link dropped into the channel. Hassle to implement, though.
  - welterde 3y ago
    Polari [1] seems to support automatically uploading images and text to some imagebin/pastebin and then posting the link to the channel. The Lounge [2] also supports it (with the files self-hosted in thelounge instance). [1] https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Polari https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Polari [2] https://thelounge.chat/ https://thelounge.chat/
- anthk 3y ago
  Jabber.
- ComputerGuru 3y ago
  All the open source Discord rooms I'm in, absolutely no one uses the voice chat and I didn't even know there was a screen sharing option. The ratio of users to admins is probably 10,000:1 so ease of admin isn't really an issue (see also reddit where mod tools suck). There are plenty of visually appealing clients (e.g. this one!). I personally think persistent message history (XMPP botched that rollout terribly) - which goes hand-in-hand with multipresence - and the extreme dearth of any - let alone actually good and usable - IRC (or XMPP) mobile clients (esp. on iOS) was the real reason they lost mainstream use. Multipresence is more than just a checkbox; doing it correctly involves actually setting up a SSO system with actual first-party user account support (not just relegating it as a stateful detail of the underlying IRC library you are using). IMHO actual account integration would have bound users more loyally to IRC and would have created more of a "network effect". Inline attachments, emoji reactions, etc are all just icing on the cake.
bluejekyll 3y ago
The simple story here is hosting. Self-hosted IRC while not hard to maintain are not easily discoverable, and ad-hoc communities.
distcs 3y ago
> Man, I wish I still knew people on IRC IRC is still alive. I still know people on IRC. Most opensource channels have thriving communities on IRC with 100s of regulars logged into the channels everyday. The people I knew in the IRC world in 2010 are still very much there in 2023. The only big change has been that all of us moved away from Freenode over to Libera after the Freenode takeover. And everyone has become older and more mellow and more friendly to beginners. If you've been away from IRC recently, I urge you to get back to Libera chat network and see for yourself. The IRC world is much better now than it was before.
- sho_hn 3y ago
  There's a fair amount of enthusiastic or expert communities that remain the most vibrant in their IRC edition. I recently looked for an active chat for hobbyist/DIY EE stuff, and I joined around half a dozen Discords and they were all nearly completely deserted. Part of it is that each individual Discord aims to be a complete lifestyle, replate with completely redundant #general rooms and what not - it's too hard to sustain that kind of thing. ##electronics on Libera, meanwhile, is alive and kicking every time of the day. I've made similar experiences with non-tech topics like e.g. cycling.
Groxx 3y ago
And chat history. Chat history is huge. And so is integrated search. Yeah, you can run a bouncer... but then it depends on that bouncer working, and wtf is a bouncer, why is it necessary, and how do you explain that to normal people? And splits? IRC is a ridiculous experience comparatively. Its big benefit is that it's super cheap to run.
- jacobsenscott 3y ago
  I hate chat history. That's corporate mentality invading your non-work brain. IRC should feel like walking into a bar full of nerds, and you just join the conversation wherever it is. Even at work, if I'm out for a few days I definitely don't "catch up on slack" - that's not what chat is for. Long lived conversations belong somewhere else - email, or PR, or (god forbid) jira.
  - gochi 3y ago
    I don't see how chat history prevents that feeling. There's no requirement to read through history every time.
    - jacobsenscott 3y ago
      I mean the lack of history on IRC is a feature, not a bug.
iforgotpassword 3y ago
#xkcd on slashnet? ;-)
mrits 3y ago
The feeling I got of IRC in the mid 90s is that it was more centralized than it appeared. Most of the server operators hung out in the same channels.
MisterTea 3y ago
I'm idling on OFTC, Libera and two private servers.

by smodo 3y ago

culinary-robot 3y ago

Iced is awesome. Slightly biased being a contributed though :) I would recommend https://libera.chat/ https://libera.chat/. There are a ton of great channels: ##rust, #linux, #networking, #security to mention a few.

TkTech 3y ago

There are many, many IRC networks that are still very active with tens of thousands of active users. Libera.chat is probably the best one I can suggest at the moment for a wide selection of topics. Politics, news, every tech group and subject under the sun, etc... I've run https://n.tkte.ch/ https://n.tkte.ch/ for the last decade and it's bots are currently connected to over 200 unique, active IRC servers. Still very much alive!

tcmart14 3y ago

No kidding. I miss IRC. I still use it, but yea, its mostly silence. About the only time I've seen interaction is on something like #fedora or #freebsd where people just ask support type questions.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

542458 3y ago

> We threw it all away for gifs and centralization! Simpler configuration, easy voice chat and screen share, simpler administration, user accounts and profile pictures by default, visually appealing and more noob-friendly client, persistent chat history, media embeds, file uploads, rich presence, etc...

floren 3y ago
IRCv3 ticks a lot of boxes server-side; you get chat history, user accounts (you can even log with the same nick from multiple clients), replies, and a bunch of other stuff. Some clients show link/image previews. I think the #1 thing that would make them better would be configuration options to drag&drop/paste images and other files, and have those automatically uploaded to a user-configured service with a link dropped into the channel. Hassle to implement, though.
- welterde 3y ago
  Polari [1] seems to support automatically uploading images and text to some imagebin/pastebin and then posting the link to the channel. The Lounge [2] also supports it (with the files self-hosted in thelounge instance). [1] https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Polari https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Polari [2] https://thelounge.chat/ https://thelounge.chat/
anthk 3y ago
Jabber.
ComputerGuru 3y ago
All the open source Discord rooms I'm in, absolutely no one uses the voice chat and I didn't even know there was a screen sharing option. The ratio of users to admins is probably 10,000:1 so ease of admin isn't really an issue (see also reddit where mod tools suck). There are plenty of visually appealing clients (e.g. this one!). I personally think persistent message history (XMPP botched that rollout terribly) - which goes hand-in-hand with multipresence - and the extreme dearth of any - let alone actually good and usable - IRC (or XMPP) mobile clients (esp. on iOS) was the real reason they lost mainstream use. Multipresence is more than just a checkbox; doing it correctly involves actually setting up a SSO system with actual first-party user account support (not just relegating it as a stateful detail of the underlying IRC library you are using). IMHO actual account integration would have bound users more loyally to IRC and would have created more of a "network effect". Inline attachments, emoji reactions, etc are all just icing on the cake.

bluejekyll 3y ago

The simple story here is hosting. Self-hosted IRC while not hard to maintain are not easily discoverable, and ad-hoc communities.

distcs 3y ago

> Man, I wish I still knew people on IRC IRC is still alive. I still know people on IRC. Most opensource channels have thriving communities on IRC with 100s of regulars logged into the channels everyday. The people I knew in the IRC world in 2010 are still very much there in 2023. The only big change has been that all of us moved away from Freenode over to Libera after the Freenode takeover. And everyone has become older and more mellow and more friendly to beginners. If you've been away from IRC recently, I urge you to get back to Libera chat network and see for yourself. The IRC world is much better now than it was before.

sho_hn 3y ago
There's a fair amount of enthusiastic or expert communities that remain the most vibrant in their IRC edition. I recently looked for an active chat for hobbyist/DIY EE stuff, and I joined around half a dozen Discords and they were all nearly completely deserted. Part of it is that each individual Discord aims to be a complete lifestyle, replate with completely redundant #general rooms and what not - it's too hard to sustain that kind of thing. ##electronics on Libera, meanwhile, is alive and kicking every time of the day. I've made similar experiences with non-tech topics like e.g. cycling.

Groxx 3y ago

And chat history. Chat history is huge. And so is integrated search. Yeah, you can run a bouncer... but then it depends on that bouncer working, and wtf is a bouncer, why is it necessary, and how do you explain that to normal people? And splits? IRC is a ridiculous experience comparatively. Its big benefit is that it's super cheap to run.

jacobsenscott 3y ago
I hate chat history. That's corporate mentality invading your non-work brain. IRC should feel like walking into a bar full of nerds, and you just join the conversation wherever it is. Even at work, if I'm out for a few days I definitely don't "catch up on slack" - that's not what chat is for. Long lived conversations belong somewhere else - email, or PR, or (god forbid) jira.
- gochi 3y ago
  I don't see how chat history prevents that feeling. There's no requirement to read through history every time.
  - jacobsenscott 3y ago
    I mean the lack of history on IRC is a feature, not a bug.

iforgotpassword 3y ago

#xkcd on slashnet? ;-)

mrits 3y ago

The feeling I got of IRC in the mid 90s is that it was more centralized than it appeared. Most of the server operators hung out in the same channels.

MisterTea 3y ago

I'm idling on OFTC, Libera and two private servers.