I think IRC and plain text email (especially if it does not use Unicode) are not so bad. NNTP is not so bad either. And, standards should not be made excessive

I think IRC and plain text email (especially if it does not use Unicode) are not so bad. NNTP is not so bad either. And, standards should not be made excessively complicated or badly designed; even if there is some complexity they should be optional when possible.