I haven't tried newer systems like Matrix or Discord so I have no idea if these do any better, or if so, why, although I am consistently surprised by the number of requests posted to reddit to 'join our discord community'. (My reaction is always kind of, well, we're here in this reddit where there is already a community, so..)
My point is not to dis on IRC/chat rooms here, just explaining why I've never particularly found it engaging, and so I'm curious what others see in it, as I feel it's something I could learn to appreciate if I tried a bit harder.
In terms of why IRC specifically, I enjoy the simplicity of the protocol and the open-source nature of it’s ecosystem
There are also different types of channels. I only talk in technical channels like #ubuntu when I need help. No point introducing noise. But I might have a monologue about some petty stuff in ##math-offtopic, for example.
For example there are two big c++ discord servers. You can't even search for discord servers, you can't favorite single channels. You quickly get overwhelmed with notifications. Not to mention the things you have to click when you join a server.
And it runs with electron.
It's about the people who will use the tool. Software developers would use irc, gamers would use discord.
You could definitely argue that IRC appeals more to the kind of developer who spends their entire day in the terminal and Vim--but that's not the only kind of developer out there! Just like many developers prefer IntelliJ to Vim, many prefer Discord to IRC. Discord and Slack both offer real improvements for some workflows, and some people value those improvements.
As an example, persistent chat is hugely valuable in a help community--I often find I don't need to ask a question at all because I can just search in the history to find what I'm looking for. Even something as seemingly frivolous as reactions is quite useful--one person can answer a question and get a chorus of 'amens' without actually having a bunch of "what he said"s in the chat.
• I like IRC because it is clean and a light-weight text-only interface (well, you could use emojis, if you wish). I prefer text-based conversations when possible. I'm equally fine with video, but text is far more effective for technical conversations.
• It is also less stressful for me, as I can respond in a more asynchronous manner, without any implicit pressure to immediately respond (e.g. the "$person is typing ..." notification).
• IRC 'stuck' with me, because I largely use it for upstream projects that I participate in.
• To avoid "boring questions" it is useful to put an etiquette "hint" in the channel topic, and gently point new users to it. E.g. I've written this some 8 years ago for a channel I used to moderate: https://www.rdoproject.org/contribute/irc-etiquette/
• Lastly, I recognize IRC's pros and cons, so I'm not religiously attached to it, and I'm fine to use other chat tools. I just don't want to become that guy in the last pane of this XKCD comic ;-) — https://xkcd.com/1782/
I'd also add that IRC nowadays is very different from what it used to be. If you removed bouncers channels would be mostly empty. That's why you often see silence.
Back in the days IRC had very vibrant communities. I'd say it's turning into nostalgia now.
Users on the attacking service get full access to IRC but also additional channels. For who don't mind the insane web bloatware it's simply the least friction path to abandon irc to participate.
In my experience communities that banned these bridges have remained vibrant and active.
I have also always felt this way, trying to get into it and thinking I'll enjoy it but never really succeeding. Maybe all of the people trying to get into it need to create a channel on Libera and just start talking?
IRC and all internet communities that rely on real-time communication have this implicit hurdle where you have to be comfortable talking to people you have never and will never meet.
I personally have never felt especially interested in internet friends and so when I see a Slack channel for something I'm interested in, I just lurk. There is something about the real-time nature of it that is harder to get into compared to sites like HN or reddit, where you can post something and not be as actively holding up a conversation; It's more work. It's also less interesting than doing it in person.
The upside of lurking on platforms like Slack is that every now and then, when someone posts a link, a job posting, something else that I find interesting, I can click on it and easily search for it. Without an IRC bouncer and checking in at regular intervals, I see less interesting stuff over time. You have to "be there", it seems. That's aside from the slow, questions only discussions you're referencing. My guess is that people who can't get into chat rooms, IRC, etc are not willing to check into these online spaces in the same way they do physical ones.
Tbh if you're on hacker news you're already halfway there. You clearly like high-density no-nonsense communication and aren't put off by the lack of a glossy consumer app.
Slack is kinda IRC just more glossy though. I have a lot of time for slack groups, especially the professional ones like MacAdmins. Don't forget slack also has actual search (at least in the groups that pay for it).
But lurking is normal. When there's 500 users in a channel you don't want to go "hey everyone how's your day" constantly because nobody has time to keep up with that if everyone does it. Though if you're into that, there's offtopic channels usually with people that do have time for it.
Plus it woke up some nostalgic feelings back from when I was first discovering the internet (circa 2000).
I think they don't apply to the freewheeling chat channels.
In those, a totally different set of social norms apply, and one that may be counterintuitive is that, to get a conversation going, you shouldn't try to be _too_ provocative to get attention. Reason being that you may be dismissed as a troll not worthy of feeding. There's a balance to be struck, but it does exist.
Chat is also not for everyone. And IRC isn't even for every chatter. So it's entirely plausible and not really damning if IRC just isn't your vibe. But if the idea (of a 33-year-old protocol, of a mostly-decentralized infrastructure, of f/oss server and client software) intrigues you, then I'd encourage you to give it another try but with different goals.
Explore more channels. Pop into some of the social ones with 100 < n < 1000 users. Set up a persistent client like TheLounge or Convos on a pi in the closet, so you can catch what happens after you close your browser or sleep your laptop.
I feel the same way about IRC (and Matrix). I think a part of the problem is that the technical Q&A discussion that happens in most of the dev channels would be better served taking place on a forum. Lots of those chats aren't happening in real-time anyways. And if you're not there to receive the messages, the information is lost.
OTOH, certain activities do lend themselves better to real-time messaging. For example, the subreddit of your favorite sportsball team might have a Discord chat that is lots of fun during a live game. Another example; many video game subreddits will have all their LFG (looking for group) activity in a Discord server. Both of these scenarios are very "in the moment" interactions that don't really need to be preserved for the future.
This is where a good bouncer comes in. I can search all the way back to the beginning of when I joined a channel in Quassel. It's not lost at all, and a forum is much less direct.
This is one thing where Matrix shines by the way, as when you join a channel you can even go back to things that were said before you joined. Though this is a bit of a double-edged sword. Sometimes when you say something it's good to be aware of who's there to read it and who isn't.
> My reaction is always kind of, well, we're here in this reddit where there is already a community
I think that misses the different ways people seek to interact online. Reddit/HN style threaded comments have played a traditional role in social/aggregation sites, whereas live chat-based platforms are newer and facilitate a different kind of experience.
Both have value but they are different, and it could be that the latter is simply less interesting to some people.
I would say that perhaps, at least from what I've seen, it's often not really a discussion at all, but more like a question answering forum. I suppose what I like about HN/reddit style forums more, is that there is a "post", with a clear topic or article, and then people actually have a full, long discussion about it. Sometimes of varying quality, but it's at least full of threads where people react, people react to those reactions, etc. Whereas what I've seen on IRC is mostly just "how do I do x", and then some random short-lived arguments about how to do X better, or why are you doing X, etc. It doesn't seem to be a discussion but more like a problem solving brainstorm with a bunch of people who aren't stakeholders in whatever the original poster is talking about.
So, I'm not sure, but maybe the way the discussion in a link aggregator is specifically oriented around a "post" and clear topic is what makes it more engaging for me, rather than just a nebulous promise that "this channel is to discuss X.." followed by people just sitting there with not much to say about X.
But, maybe my take is completely wrong, and that's why I asked the question, maybe I've missed the very interesting and dynamic back-and-forth discussions and funny moments that attract and keep people engaged in a chat room. Maybe it's just a matter of being there long enough.
Simple protocol
Use any client I like
Also accessible via the web
Decentralized and non-hierarchical
Been around for a while
It's blazing fast, uses very little bandwidth and is not polluted by images and stupid stickers, shaking windows or chat bubbles. Of these only the images can be handy sometimes but you can use a weblink for that.
Also, it's anonymous, you can just make up whatever nickname you want, no need to register (ok for some channels/servers they can require it). Just make sure to use a VPS to hide your IP. No "create an account with us first, what's your date of birth and other stuff we have no actual reason to ask for". No terms & conditions crap.
The whole thing with the rooms with hundreds of people joined but not talking is exactly what I like. There is a huge powerful community but very little noise. People don't blab on about what they had for dinner (except in the offtopic channels). IRC is really to the point, though this is a cultural thing, not technical. If you go to #obscureapp you will see talk about this obscure app, and don't have to wade through cat pictures and other BS. Because none of the regulars want to sift through this shit every day so such distractions are quickly moderated.
What you need is a bouncer. I use Quassel myself because it has a GUI client which makes it easy to control multiple connections to networks (with other bouncers this can be complicated). And it has a great Android client QuasselDroid. With Quassel you can just visit it once a day and scroll back to see what you've missed.
In IRC time is also very fluid, you can just reply to a question someone asked much later. If you saw an unanswered question, you probably didn't wait long enough. In fact it is super annoying when people plonk down a question on IRC and then leave 1 minute later. This is not how it works when people are on tens of channels at the same time!
If you're on there regularly and keep a bouncer running 24/7 you will get to know the 'usual suspects' in each channel and you will see a very strong sense of community.
I hate Discord, I like Matrix but matrix becomes difficult to manage if you join 50 public channels. The UI of its clients are focused on being a whatsapp/telegram replacement, not an IRC replacement.
As one actual specific example of what I like about IRC, I had an issue once with a FOSS package on FreeBSD. I mentioned this on the right channel, and it turned out the maintainer was there as well. He confirmed he saw the same issue, found a fix, gave me a workaround and published the final fix 10 minutes later. This is what makes IRC (and Libera in particular) so great. This kind of support is amazing. And this wasn't even a small package at all.
In comparison: I work for a multinational and we pay millions to the usual big tech suspects for "premium" support with agents that don't know more than it says in the kbase which I have already read, not to mention all the jumping through dark pattern hoops I have to go through just to get a ticket in the system. When it gets through I have to reiterate everything I have already said in the ticket, then they will tell me I'm doing it wrong because according to the docs it should work. Yeah, I read the docs, I'm contacting you because it doesn't. Then follows the "troubleshooting" which involves turning unrelated things on/off in the vague hope that it might work because they can't tell me they have no clue as to what the problem is. Fast forward a week or 2 or sometimes a month and if we bug our account manager enough they might grant us the extraordinary privilege of sending our request to someone who is actually slightly involved in development. Only at this point the issue is fixed though we usually have to wait for ages for it to make its way into production. And we pay really big bucks for this crap.
This is where IRC shines. And a lot of the things I mention are not even technical. You could do this thing on any platform, really. But it's part of the culture of IRC. I think what also helps is that the only people who are still sticking with IRC are quite technical so it bypasses the whole "expecting you're a moron that doesn't read the docs" stuff. Bonus points for those that have a registered + cloaked nick and haven't logged in 2 seconds ago :)
I will never forget how absolutely gobstricken I was with how perfectly the Libera team executed everything, and they were so incredibly polite through what has to be some of the densest chaos one could witness on the internet.
Really historic day. Happy birthday, Libera!
Also kudos to the Libera team to not continue trying to fight the battle, after the first few weeks I don't remember freenode ever even being mentioned. They just focused on getting back to life as usual which worked great.
I've stuck with too many dying communities.
My initial draft did include a sentence about freenode in the first paragraph, but after a short internal discussion we decided to remove that, so I rewrote that part. Rather easy and quick, actually.
Now on the why: Libera was a clear cut. Reasons for that are different per person affected, but include e.g. a lot of pain to see what has become of something we put years in, wanting to have a positive vibe / outlook and rather create than mourn et cetera. We always communicated and worked in that way, we also asked people who basically lifestreamed the decline of freenode, which looked a mixture of a bad trash tv novella and a dumpster fire, to please move it out of our main channel. The blog post basically just continues in that spirit.
We are aware of our history, and people interested in it still can find the whole mess floating around on the web. Tech articles, discussions on social media, blog posts of various projects and users etc. I think history is "in our favour" and there is no need to try and hide it. The blog post, however, is about our Birthday and focusses on Libera.Chat, and not on the past that freenode was.
Of course that makes the "from scratch" sound a bit wrong, but as some other user here already pointed out: it isn't that wrong. We built up everything from scratch, and that includes trust. We didn't know how many projects and communities would follow us and migrate over, especially not that early. We are of course very grateful that so many did, and for all the support we received during the very hard first weeks. But we could never be sure if it would go that well.
Hope that clears up that part a bit :)
Edit: removed a typo / half cut off sentence
This is a half-truth. Some people (in a community I'm in) had implicit trust in the team that did such a great job running freenode, though not everyone. I'd say you already had some trust (just like some IRC software, I guess); and we're glad we chose to follow to libera.chat in the end.
This really helped. You focused on "getting life back to normal" from the get-go, looking to move forward instead of looking back at the anger and despair. This really helped to make Libera the home it always was within a matter of weeks. Really well done and thank you.
For me this mature and positive mindset only increased my trust in the team, there was never any need to rebuild it because none was lost :)
I've been part of a community which forked in the past and it was so cringe (at least to me) for one of the sides to keep explaining the origins and such on each and every presentation even 10 years later.
Anyone who knew Freenode knows the story already, and does any newcomer need to know, on that very blog post? I'd say no.
Edit: Or maybe they don't want to drag the whole drama into this celebration again :) Libera moved on so quickly that even after 2 months it felt like everything was in the distant past and the community was just as it had always been.
But then it would have been better to not elaborate on the history. I agree it's a bit weird like this.
By his own manifesto he wouldn't do that, and he wouldn't want to be a hypocrite.
I'm sure it doesn't help that the current owner of freenode is notoriously litigious.
Yawn. All I have seen is some angry techbro who can dish out an hour of time for an attorney to write angry letter when he does not have things his way. That is not to say this is a criticism of victims but rather a damn shame more people do not stand up to this nonsense.
Incidentally this 'notoriously litigious' individual is also being sued over alleged sexual-harassment committed by him at his previous company London Trust Media[1]. However not sure of the latest status given the sale(s) of certain companies.
[1]: http://web.archive.org/web/corrupt.tech/1708590130-ocr-compr...
> Starting from scratch, we managed to gain around 50 000 users in just a month and a half, a number which has been mostly steady since.
Seems pretty impressive when they put it that way!
> Starting from scratch, we managed to gain around 50 000 users in just a month and a half
https://web.archive.org/web/20210912070004/https://freenode....
It was turned into a Free Speech reddit clone for a bit, which nobody used.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220402191330/https://freenode....
It's now a wiki which refers to the network as "assmode" and implores you to instead join "pissnet" run by the Impeerial Family.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220517234626/https://freenode....
Sort of the death knell of desperately trying to form a community.
I'm idling in the top 10 channels, it's semi-active in that people pop in and say stuff, but there's no interaction. Most connections are from old bots, or from community pages that haven't been updated.
You then get a consistent session, that all history automatically, with clients for every platform. Plus you're on Matrix which is a good thing :)
1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freenode#/media/File%3AIRC_t...
There is some tug-of-war going on about that domain that's too stupid to even talk about. (As are all the stupid "what is true bitcoin???" debates of 2017-ish.)
The actual Bitcoin domain is https://bitcoincore.org and they link Libera there.
1. Technical prowess doesn't supersede the value of interpersonal/social abilities
2. Money doesn't let you control the narrative in a free system
3. Elon Musk isn't Elon Musk because he's rich, he's Elon Musk because he's good at marketing
4. Reputation is everything
It's a shame that the cost of these lessons was the destruction of Freenode and further fragmentation of IRC, and hopefully the recovery continues. It was great to see everyone united for a brief moment though, regardless of your views against Freenode or any particular channel it was widely accepted that it was a horrible move and everyone resisted the hostile takeover.
all he had to do was change the top level administration and keep quiet for a few months, at which point he could have implemented his changes slowly
Switching from Twitter to Mastodon means abandoning the (pretty terrible but familiar) software and an entire mode of interaction. Mastodon is much more about interacting with your peers than celebrities.
If anything this shows how superior IRC because of its flexibility.
You can just host it somewhere else if things go sour.
Sincerely,
Gaurav Giri
Ex-CIO Private Internet Access Inc. (5.5 years)
PS: War is expensive, his costs are mounting.
To me it looks like he had some issues with the people behind FreeNode and decided to take it over simply to destroy it (and/or change it into the right-wing gaslighting pro-trump "community" that it is now). If you look at it this way, it all makes sense: It's all just a personal vendetta project for him
There are two servers dedicated to the c++ language.
My main gripe if the offical client is the lack of multi account support, Yeah I know it has an account switcher but a) its only desktop atm b) you only get notifactions from the account you are currently using. The "workaround" is to multi-client.
The thing is with IRC, its a protocol, so any client supporting the protocol works, If one client doesn't support the features you want you can swap to another, if no client supports the feature you want you can hack it onto an existing one / create your own.
It might sound a bit cliché but despite a big overlap of members which hang out and participate in both at the same time IRC has way less noise and better discussions and answers. I also feel like the language creators, while hanging out in both, do the "important" communication on IRC.
On discord there is more emote, picture and link spam and more "joking around with memes", and that is despite the fact that the discord servers already have dedicated channels for certain topics.
Now this is a very subjective observation on my part, but I believe that there will always be a place for plaintext communication, since it automatically filters a lot of noise and demands a lot less mental overhead to keep running in the background.
Please note that I am not really nostalgic for IRC, since I am a pretty recent user. I'm at an age where I barely missed the "golden IRC years" and when I got into programming it was already declared dead by many, whatever that even means given that some people have been claiming the death of IRC for a long time now.
Of course, it's not as much of a free-for-all as some other networks (I recall Rizon lets you set whatever cloak you want), but it should hide hostnames.
