3 ms·

IRC is and was the answer.

by BoredPositron 1y ago

ClueslessTech99 1y ago
IRC doesn't have chat history and a bunch of other features.
- AAAAaccountAAAA 1y ago
  IRCv3 has "chathistory" extension. It basically involves combining an IRC network and a bouncer. There are at least two server implementations using it: ergo, which is more or less production ready, but does not have support for multi-server networks, and Libera's sable, which is under (very slow) development. I wonder why such thing wasn't done 15...20 years ago. Now it seems to be too little too late, with Matrix more or less having been taken the place of IRC.
  - darkwater 1y ago
    I guess that because of the "we don't need that here" attitude that ran a lot through the first generation(s) of Internet population. And it's a shame because with a more dynamic IRC development we wouldn't be in the Slack/Discord silos situation. Or maybe we would have been anyway because adding more and more complex features to federated, open-protocol systems with many actors involved with different, maybe even competing interests is not easy at all. But also if I think back at late '90s, IRC had almost the needed critical mass and non-tech users to become something more mainstream...
- scblock 1y ago
  Our small group uses The Lounge web client for IRC which is a very good PWA, acts as a bouncer, has history search (not unlimited, but pretty long), supports image upload, and basically builds a modern group chat on top of IRC as a backend. We have a few folks who still use traditional IRC clients, but almost everyone just uses the web app. It's not a bad middle ground.
- diggan 1y ago
  > IRC doesn't have chat history Personally I see that as a feature. Chat is ephemeral, discussions/texts that aren't should be saved elsewhere anyways, otherwise it gets lost with all the other ephemeral stuff.
  - barbazoo 1y ago
    That’s what I thought until I learned that history really seems to refer to persistence. So if you’re not connected, you won’t get messages, even after you reconnect? For many that’s not very useful.
    - diggan 1y ago
      > So if you’re not connected, you won’t get messages That's true, if you're not connected, you don't receive messages. > even after you reconnect? That's not true, once you're connected, you start receiving messages again. > For many that’s not very useful. Yeah, I understand it isn't useful if your perspective is that you should be able to read what happened when you were away. But I guess my previous point is that people shouldn't have to do that, there should be another resource for catching up what happened when you were away, and instead it should be OK to return without having to read through all the messages.
      - barbazoo 1y ago
        I can see that in a lot of use cases, yeah. And yes I meant receiving old messages once you reconnect.
        deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      - smlavine 1y ago
        I think this is the number one reason more people don't end up using IRC nowadays. The flow for newer, younger users is: - Use some software project, want to ask a question, see they have an "IRC channel" - Hopefully it's a hyperlink to an IRC web chat, or else they'll have to do a lot of research to find out what IRC is - Join the web chat link, see a room with a list of names - See no messages - Ask a question - Wait ten minutes, get no reply - Assume it's just dead and leave The ability to see older messages would be a huge boon, and to see messages between connections as well. I've seen it happen that a user joins a channel, they leave because nobody talked to them, somebody answers their question after they leave, they rejoin, they ask the question again, then disconnect.
perching_aix 1y ago
Never used it, what's so great about IRC? All I know is that's it's self hosted chat with no history retention, which doesn't sound like a solution to anything fancy in particular. The latter bit strikes me as an anti-feature even, if anything.
- BoredPositron 1y ago
  Chat history is a place were knowledge dies. That said my bouncer keeps the history for me.
  - perching_aix 1y ago
    Why? With chat history present, reasonable people can search for previously answered questions. Without it, if somebody joins afresh, even if their question was answered just before them, they could have no idea.
    - m-p-3 1y ago
      IMO it's partly because it's an inefficient platform for storing knowledge, its purpose is instant communication. If that knowledge is actually valuable, it should be stored elsewhere, in a structured manner. But I get your point, it's better than not having any answer at all.
  - AAAAaccountAAAA 1y ago
    While long-term chat histories aren't maybe that useful, the problem with IRC is that if your connection dies, you miss all the messages until the connection resumes. That is a big deal on mobile. Bouncers are an option, but the need to use that sort of extra services will make non-technical users turn away.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- cbm-vic-20 1y ago
  > what's so great about IRC? It's got a simple protocol that's easy to implement. There's no company who "owns" IRC, as there is with Matrix, and no "reference implementation". Extensions and enhancements are done by consensus of the people writing the clients and servers, there's no central agency that maintains extendion proposals like Python's PEP or Java's JEP. As a result, to be as interoperable as possible, most implementations stick to supporting the existing status quo. If you want to add something new to a client or a server, you run the risk of having that feature only work for a small fraction of users. If it's popular enough, other impementors may choose to make their clients and servers support it. IRCv3 is an attempt to make collaboration a little more formal, but it's a slow process.
komali2 1y ago
We ran our co-op on matrix for a while. We switched to discord because onboarding to matrix and making people use this "weird app" was a burden. I would have loved to use IRC, or xmpp, but the way we use these "chat apps" is as the cornerstone of our entire organization, and I couldn't find a good way to get IRC or xmpp to work that way. For example, we have the "gigs" channel where gigs that are hiring are posted as threads, and people interested reply in that thread asking questions about the gig, putting their names in the hat, getting communicated with about client questions etc. A lot of the information is "duplicated" to our CRM and even our wiki in a little table, but at the end of the day the "chat room" is the hub. Same for events (which are duplicated to wiki and calendar), announcements (wiki, monthly email newsletter), and long running threads in "general" planning FOSS projects or whatever that people that only check in a couple times a week will pick up again after a gap.
regularjack 1y ago
Depends on what the question is.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

IRC is and was the answer.

ClueslessTech99 1y ago

IRC doesn't have chat history and a bunch of other features.

AAAAaccountAAAA 1y ago
IRCv3 has "chathistory" extension. It basically involves combining an IRC network and a bouncer. There are at least two server implementations using it: ergo, which is more or less production ready, but does not have support for multi-server networks, and Libera's sable, which is under (very slow) development. I wonder why such thing wasn't done 15...20 years ago. Now it seems to be too little too late, with Matrix more or less having been taken the place of IRC.
- darkwater 1y ago
  I guess that because of the "we don't need that here" attitude that ran a lot through the first generation(s) of Internet population. And it's a shame because with a more dynamic IRC development we wouldn't be in the Slack/Discord silos situation. Or maybe we would have been anyway because adding more and more complex features to federated, open-protocol systems with many actors involved with different, maybe even competing interests is not easy at all. But also if I think back at late '90s, IRC had almost the needed critical mass and non-tech users to become something more mainstream...
scblock 1y ago
Our small group uses The Lounge web client for IRC which is a very good PWA, acts as a bouncer, has history search (not unlimited, but pretty long), supports image upload, and basically builds a modern group chat on top of IRC as a backend. We have a few folks who still use traditional IRC clients, but almost everyone just uses the web app. It's not a bad middle ground.
diggan 1y ago
> IRC doesn't have chat history Personally I see that as a feature. Chat is ephemeral, discussions/texts that aren't should be saved elsewhere anyways, otherwise it gets lost with all the other ephemeral stuff.
- barbazoo 1y ago
  That’s what I thought until I learned that history really seems to refer to persistence. So if you’re not connected, you won’t get messages, even after you reconnect? For many that’s not very useful.
  - diggan 1y ago
    > So if you’re not connected, you won’t get messages That's true, if you're not connected, you don't receive messages. > even after you reconnect? That's not true, once you're connected, you start receiving messages again. > For many that’s not very useful. Yeah, I understand it isn't useful if your perspective is that you should be able to read what happened when you were away. But I guess my previous point is that people shouldn't have to do that, there should be another resource for catching up what happened when you were away, and instead it should be OK to return without having to read through all the messages.
    - barbazoo 1y ago
      I can see that in a lot of use cases, yeah. And yes I meant receiving old messages once you reconnect.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
    - smlavine 1y ago
      I think this is the number one reason more people don't end up using IRC nowadays. The flow for newer, younger users is: - Use some software project, want to ask a question, see they have an "IRC channel" - Hopefully it's a hyperlink to an IRC web chat, or else they'll have to do a lot of research to find out what IRC is - Join the web chat link, see a room with a list of names - See no messages - Ask a question - Wait ten minutes, get no reply - Assume it's just dead and leave The ability to see older messages would be a huge boon, and to see messages between connections as well. I've seen it happen that a user joins a channel, they leave because nobody talked to them, somebody answers their question after they leave, they rejoin, they ask the question again, then disconnect.

perching_aix 1y ago

Never used it, what's so great about IRC? All I know is that's it's self hosted chat with no history retention, which doesn't sound like a solution to anything fancy in particular. The latter bit strikes me as an anti-feature even, if anything.

BoredPositron 1y ago
Chat history is a place were knowledge dies. That said my bouncer keeps the history for me.
- perching_aix 1y ago
  Why? With chat history present, reasonable people can search for previously answered questions. Without it, if somebody joins afresh, even if their question was answered just before them, they could have no idea.
  - m-p-3 1y ago
    IMO it's partly because it's an inefficient platform for storing knowledge, its purpose is instant communication. If that knowledge is actually valuable, it should be stored elsewhere, in a structured manner. But I get your point, it's better than not having any answer at all.
- AAAAaccountAAAA 1y ago
  While long-term chat histories aren't maybe that useful, the problem with IRC is that if your connection dies, you miss all the messages until the connection resumes. That is a big deal on mobile. Bouncers are an option, but the need to use that sort of extra services will make non-technical users turn away.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
cbm-vic-20 1y ago
> what's so great about IRC? It's got a simple protocol that's easy to implement. There's no company who "owns" IRC, as there is with Matrix, and no "reference implementation". Extensions and enhancements are done by consensus of the people writing the clients and servers, there's no central agency that maintains extendion proposals like Python's PEP or Java's JEP. As a result, to be as interoperable as possible, most implementations stick to supporting the existing status quo. If you want to add something new to a client or a server, you run the risk of having that feature only work for a small fraction of users. If it's popular enough, other impementors may choose to make their clients and servers support it. IRCv3 is an attempt to make collaboration a little more formal, but it's a slow process.

komali2 1y ago

We ran our co-op on matrix for a while. We switched to discord because onboarding to matrix and making people use this "weird app" was a burden. I would have loved to use IRC, or xmpp, but the way we use these "chat apps" is as the cornerstone of our entire organization, and I couldn't find a good way to get IRC or xmpp to work that way. For example, we have the "gigs" channel where gigs that are hiring are posted as threads, and people interested reply in that thread asking questions about the gig, putting their names in the hat, getting communicated with about client questions etc. A lot of the information is "duplicated" to our CRM and even our wiki in a little table, but at the end of the day the "chat room" is the hub. Same for events (which are duplicated to wiki and calendar), announcements (wiki, monthly email newsletter), and long running threads in "general" planning FOSS projects or whatever that people that only check in a couple times a week will pick up again after a gap.

regularjack 1y ago

Depends on what the question is.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]