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Comment by diebeforei485 | Hacker News Reader

If the problem is that Slack/Discord are proprietary, isn't the solution to build an FLOSS alternative to Slack/Discord that anyone can run a server for? Do such projects exist?

While I loved using IRC 10-15 years ago, the user experience is simply terrible by our standards today (and adding emoji reactions isn't going to solve that imo).

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> While I loved using IRC 10-15 years ago, the user experience is simply terrible by our standards today (and adding emoji reactions isn't going to solve that imo).

The terrible user experience of slack and discord is why I started using IRC even more. emoji, images, link previews, and the like all lead to annoying/awful spam. Instead of a conversation you get a stream on memes and image macros along with link and twitter spam. I find it derails the conversation and clutters the screen. Nothing less fun than trying to have a conversation and some idiot is posting "related" image macros flooding the chat with garbage.

The bottom line is I want to talk to someone using text. IRC does exactly that.

> The terrible user experience of slack and discord is why I started using IRC even more. emoji, images, link previews, and the like all lead to annoying/awful spam. Instead of a conversation you get a stream on memes and image macros along with link and twitter spam.

I have experienced that to a certain extent on Matrix, but only in certain rooms that permit it. They are not usually #some_project but rather general channels like #linux

What I have found good is code sharing, (nothing a pastebin can't solve, except for the fact if it's a publicly logged channel the link may not work in the future). I only tend to hang out in technical related rooms.

> I find it derails the conversation and clutters the screen. Nothing less fun than trying to have a conversation and some idiot is posting "related" image macros flooding the chat with garbage.

> The bottom line is I want to talk to someone using text. IRC does exactly that.

I find the same with mailing lists vs bulletin boards. I think the barrier to a certain extent means people that have something worth adding will be bothered. A bit like this place. Imagine how HN would be if it was like 90% of Reddit these days shivers.

Hmm, logger bot could potentially detect pastebin links and fetch the content and store it along with the log in some link->content map.

This is honestly the problem of not having subchats. Slack and Discord's previews and stuff are fine, but at their own time and place. I heavily use IRC and I do miss rich previews a lot like Discord and similar have, I really don't want to open a browser to quickly check out a video or a song, IRC forces me to do so really often - especially annoying in a phone.

That is dependent on your IRC client not on IRC itself, just use a more robust client. I use Textual and it provides embedded previews of pictures and video directly in the chat window/feed...

https://riot.im

> https://riot.im

aka Matrix, (Riot is the main client) is a good one because it is decentralized and federated. This means there can be many servers and they can all be linked up. Additionally IRC can be be bridged among other things

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_(protocol)

• https://matrix.org/docs/guides/types-of-bridging.html

• https://matrix.org/docs/projects/bridges

• https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-irc/wiki/Bri...

zulip is open source (despite being developed by a company). They don't discourage you to run your own server, it's fully documented (and we do it in our company) It's not intended to be a Slack clone, but better by introducing email-like discussion topics. I like it, but seems that some less geeky people are more difficult to educate how to use it reasonably.

There’s also Mattermost.

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