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Comment by jbk | Hacker News Reader

That's a great idea.

Maybe also backport some features of Slack, like edition of messages (with a flag marking it as edited), or a common way to have plugins/extensions, or tagging links as images.

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> like edition of messages (with a flag marking it as edited)

This works on Slack but only with their client. Use one of the bridges and you have no clue what's going on and they have a centralised system for this. Syncing that somehow across all servers in an IRC network, across netsplits and everything, is far from simple. You'd also need to do this retroactively somehow if a client received a message, disconnects, the message is updated and the client then reconnects, in order to present an accurate history.

> or a common way to have plugins/extensions

IRC already has a way to allow for extensions. Or do you mean client side?

> or tagging links as images

I'm not sure the IRC protocol should care about that at all. It's more up to the client to detect image links and Glowing Bear for example already does and can display them inline.

> Syncing that somehow across all servers in an IRC network, across netsplits and everything, is far from simple.

Yes, it's not simple. But it's not impossible to do. And yes, it might not work in 100% of cases, after netsplits, but so what?

That matters a lot. Inconsistent history is a problem and leads to all kinds of communication issues and misunderstandings.

You said you agreed on A

No I edited it later to say that I meant I was in favour of B

Oh, I never saw that edit...

That's exactly the same on Slack, and people like it.

Edited messages are on my TODO for inclusion in IRCv3.3.

How on earth do you expert messaging editing to work. Are irc clients supposed to magically redraw the buffer and edit logs??! You can already tell if a link is an image, because they're posted a link to an image..... Some irc clients already inline images posted....

> Are irc clients supposed to magically redraw the buffer and edit logs??!

Who speaks about magic?

Just send a message with the original ID and make the difference. Mark it in the UI, and redisplay it.

So logs are no longer append-only? This seems like a uselessly complex thing for all servers and client logs to support. Seems like it would break many things. What situation needs an edit feature? I can think of none, since a quick follow-up correction is simple.

Also, edits would ruin many of the funny situations encountered on bash.org. :)

We use Slack heavily in our organization and editing happens all the time - whether it's to fix a typo, or insert a missing word, or cross out something we wrote earlier and put in the corrected version. Once you can do it you'll learn the value of it.

I used to work at Bloomberg, where the terminal's MSG function supports editing and outright retraction of any message that hasn't yet been read (and thus, it also supports universal unfakeable read/unread status indicators on sent mail).

Once you try it, you never want to go back.

I still use the common irc convention of rewriting the incorrect bit with an asterisk at the end on slack. Old habits die hard.

Same here except for cosmetic changes. It's the only way to be certain that people have read your corrected version, and not just the pre-corrected original.

People do it on Slack and love this feature.

Logs can be append-only, while clients can still show edits. These aren't in conflict.

It wouldn't have to be complex, either, and it certainly isn't useless (says me and a few other people already!).

Quick example: I recently typed out about 10 long lines of business development chatter in Slack, the first of which contained a list of prospects. I realized I left a few out in my list, and edited the message to add them in. Without editing, I'd have to have either posted the complete list again or added them in as a second comment. Editing the original message is simply a lot less confusing.

Whenever I see someone on my IRC channels type out 10 long lines of anything, I tell them to use some sort of pastebin instead.

Slack has a pastebin built in, too.

Slack has a pastebin built in, too.

I'm not sure why your comment was down voted, but as both an IRC and Slack user, I have to say I love Slack's built in pastebin.

https://www.glowing-bear.org/ introduces pastebin for IRC. And a ton of other Slack-esque features. Generally very great software.

Personally, I would treat the chat like a forum post and take more time to confirm that what I was posting was accurate. I have never used chat as for business purposes though, so thanks for the insight.

I do wonder though, should IRC evolve to be like Slack or should it evolve idependently? I feel that the new features should be more vital, rather than "neat"... like maybe more focus on privacy and/or anonymity. Undoubtedly, I am just resisting change...

Forum posts generally can be edited, too.

Right, but forums are a much slower, more "official" communication medium, so the edit feature makes more sense.

I see chat like in-person communication where editing something already said is impossible.

I think we're at the vi/emacs point of this discussion. Editing messages works well for me and my team, and we're glad of the feature. You don't have to like it, and I wouldn't force you to edit messages. The world supports both and we both win. :)

Without editing, you could be sure that everyone saw your follow-on correction.

With editing if people read the first version of your opening message, you don't know if they saw the edits or not.

I find edits useful for typos/formatting/cosmetics, but I don't ever edit significant information into a previous post for that reason.

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