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Unfortunately, IRC does not allow a lot of modern features that we take for granted, such as seeing a channel's history upon joining, roles, reacts, or message

Unfortunately, IRC does not allow a lot of modern features that we take for granted, such as seeing a channel's history upon joining, roles, reacts, or message editing. Last I checked, the latest IRC spec doesn't support most of these either. It might be worth working on something open and new

klardotsh 3y ago
I'm strongly of the opinion these days that channel scrollback history is an anti-feature. Anything that depends on Slack Search to be found, is in formation that should be captured in "hard documentation" - markdown docs in a git repo, Notion,even Google Docs or whatever. Roles do "somewhat" exist in IRC, in the sense that you can have ops and admins, but I suppose it's not quite as fully-fledged as something like Discord's roles. Reacts and editing indeed don't exist. Reacts are something I've pondered what an IRCv3 extension for might look like - maybe I should poke at that some day in prototype form. Message edits, well. Sure, you don't have them. You can send a follow up "s/foo/bar" kind of text, and some clients will even understand that as an edit of your last message, but of course it's not perfect. Anyway. I'd be fully happy if Slack disappeared tomorrow and we all went back to IRC, but I realize that I'm both technical, and someone who grew up on IRC. It wouldn't be perfect for everyone. But damn do I wish that reality could exist.
- Minor49er 3y ago
  Isn't hard capture the same as scrollback history?
- adrianmsmith 3y ago
  > I'm strongly of the opinion these days that channel scrollback history is an anti-feature. Anything that depends on Slack Search to be found, is in formation that should be captured in "hard documentation" - markdown docs in a git repo, Notion,even Google Docs or whatever. I am of the same opinion, but Slack's original advertising focused on how Slack could become a repository for information (rather than information being distributed over emails, Confluence, docs, Git, etc.)
  - spott 3y ago
    > rather than information being distributed over emails, Confluence, docs, Git, etc. Now information is distributed over slack, emails, confluence, docs, git, etc…
- dsr_ 3y ago
  I've said this before: At $company, we used an IRC server. Only the IT department used it. Then we ran an ejabberd XMPP server. Some of the front end devs used it on occasion. Now we run a Zulip server, and everybody uses it all the time. Killer features: - full function web client. No point in using the electron app. Mobile clients are usable, a little nicer than mobile view of the web client. - self hosted, meets our security policy. - channels and topics. - markdown - fast - images. I thought this would add nothing, but it turns out that there are lots of non-cute-animal uses. - each client can turn emojis off
  - klardotsh 3y ago
    Zulip is great - I used to work there, even. If I could ever convince $dayjob to move over, I'd be fine with that over IRC, sure!
conor- 3y ago
> It might be worth working on something open and new Matrix is extremely mature and supports all of the things you mentioned and more such as bridging to IRC servers. I frequently see people complaining about IRC and features it doesn't lack or warts in the protocol from age, but those same groups never mention Matrix as a viable alternative. Do you know why that is?

klardotsh 3y ago

I'm strongly of the opinion these days that channel scrollback history is an anti-feature. Anything that depends on Slack Search to be found, is in formation that should be captured in "hard documentation" - markdown docs in a git repo, Notion,even Google Docs or whatever. Roles do "somewhat" exist in IRC, in the sense that you can have ops and admins, but I suppose it's not quite as fully-fledged as something like Discord's roles. Reacts and editing indeed don't exist. Reacts are something I've pondered what an IRCv3 extension for might look like - maybe I should poke at that some day in prototype form. Message edits, well. Sure, you don't have them. You can send a follow up "s/foo/bar" kind of text, and some clients will even understand that as an edit of your last message, but of course it's not perfect. Anyway. I'd be fully happy if Slack disappeared tomorrow and we all went back to IRC, but I realize that I'm both technical, and someone who grew up on IRC. It wouldn't be perfect for everyone. But damn do I wish that reality could exist.

Minor49er 3y ago
Isn't hard capture the same as scrollback history?
adrianmsmith 3y ago
> I'm strongly of the opinion these days that channel scrollback history is an anti-feature. Anything that depends on Slack Search to be found, is in formation that should be captured in "hard documentation" - markdown docs in a git repo, Notion,even Google Docs or whatever. I am of the same opinion, but Slack's original advertising focused on how Slack could become a repository for information (rather than information being distributed over emails, Confluence, docs, Git, etc.)
- spott 3y ago
  > rather than information being distributed over emails, Confluence, docs, Git, etc. Now information is distributed over slack, emails, confluence, docs, git, etc…
dsr_ 3y ago
I've said this before: At $company, we used an IRC server. Only the IT department used it. Then we ran an ejabberd XMPP server. Some of the front end devs used it on occasion. Now we run a Zulip server, and everybody uses it all the time. Killer features: - full function web client. No point in using the electron app. Mobile clients are usable, a little nicer than mobile view of the web client. - self hosted, meets our security policy. - channels and topics. - markdown - fast - images. I thought this would add nothing, but it turns out that there are lots of non-cute-animal uses. - each client can turn emojis off
- klardotsh 3y ago
  Zulip is great - I used to work there, even. If I could ever convince $dayjob to move over, I'd be fine with that over IRC, sure!

conor- 3y ago

> It might be worth working on something open and new Matrix is extremely mature and supports all of the things you mentioned and more such as bridging to IRC servers. I frequently see people complaining about IRC and features it doesn't lack or warts in the protocol from age, but those same groups never mention Matrix as a viable alternative. Do you know why that is?