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>those people often seem to be there for no reason other than to tell people to RTFM, play topic nazi to such an extreme level that apparently nothing is actually on topic, or just generally berate people for having the gall to say something in the channel. Ops are extremely touchy and seem willing to immediately kick people rather than have actual discussions about things that challenge any of their beliefs about a particular topic or how the channel is being run (any such challenge, no matter how genially presented, is perceived as combative and results in a swift kick).

Funny, it's been my experience that IRC culture was always like this, especially in the late 90s when I started using it.

Came to say the same, I can hardly remember participating in a constructive conversation over IRC within the last 10-15 years. Not saying they don’t happen, just my experience has been the same as the parent posters.

Depends on the channel, Mozilla's IRC has channels (like #deeplearning) with helpful people ready to hold your hand through using and extending Mozilla TTS & Mozilla DeepSpeech.

Most channels of open source projects seem very constructive and helpful to this day. I also like lurking on #xkcd. There are still some low traffic channels of traditional communities (you know, those running on their own domain with something like phpbb) where I've known people for ages and still frequently have conversations about nothing and everything.

It's just never been that discoverable as a standalone medium, like connecting to a server and then finding a good channel. That just doesn't happen.

The network certainly has something to do with it. EFNet seems to be full of trolls and is hard to have a legitimate conversation in, while much of Freenode is so focused that it’s hard to have a natural conversation without being berated for being off-topic. Snoonet seems to strike a reasonable medium and has the nicest people I’ve met out of any IRC network.

There’s always been some of these elements, and RTFM has always been a prerequisite, however there were also other people who were not as strict so it was diluted. With the reasonable people gone, the harshness is now more obvious and keeps reasonable people away.

> And of the channels that do have real people, those people often seem to be there for no reason other than to tell people to RTFM,

It depends a lot on the community. I started using IRC in ~2010 as a teenager and I don't remember ever seeing someone being told to RTFM (except ironically).

> play topic nazi to such an extreme level that apparently nothing is actually on topic,

I've seen some topic nazis, but in most channels, discussions can go very far away from the topic.

> or just generally berate people for having the gall to say something in the channel.

what?

> Ops are extremely touchy and seem willing to immediately kick people rather than

On most channels I'm in (mostly tech channels, freenode/oftc/mozilla), I don't even know who the ops are.

TheLounge is very very limited. I will always prefer weechat to everything, but if you want a webUI, glowing bear is alright.

Like you, I've been on IRC since the 90s. I find that support channels are great if your question to the group shows that you've actually exhausted your options and need help beyond what you can think to search. Often the documentation is perfect, and if there is something someone doesn't understand, asking specifically about that typically yields a positive response (at least in my experience.)

One issue I've always had with IRC is the Founder choosing bad ops for their channel -- often based more on time-spent in the channel than actual ability to resolve issues with troublesome users.

I've always op'd a few channels and have chosen some of these people -- the type that view the cinnamon bun / status as something special or powerful, rather than the janitorial job that it is. This really sets the tone for the channel and can destroy it in the long run. Bulk the on-topic nazis in here. It's toxic behavior and should be addressed by the ops.

Anyway, long story short -- IRC isn't like it was in the 90s-00s, but its still going strong. The support channels are not a good litmus test for IRC as a whole.

> play topic nazi to such an extreme level that apparently nothing is actually on topic

This is the same state of many subreddits on Reddit. Moderation should be limited to spam and blatant attacks on users. Let the voting system handle all the rest.

And then everything ends up like the 'defaults', with memes and easy to vote up pictures utterly dominating.

Despite scrapping the office "defaults" list, there is still clearly a rotation that get set up as default and they are by and large garbage.

>And then everything ends up like the 'defaults', with memes and easy to vote up pictures utterly dominating.

I mod a good-sized sub all by myself, and I'm fairly militant about what gets through. The guidelines are clear and automod picks up a lot of the 'defaults' stuff -- but every so often something slips through and it gets so much karma.

A while ago I figured I'd just allow memes and stuff, assuming that this was what the community wanted, since these occasional posts were doing so well. I got mod mail asking if I was sick, noticed a bunch of comments saying 'this sub has gone to shit!' etc etc.

... so I went back to my militant ways, but about once every few weeks I let a meme or repost slip through if its decent quality.

Memes and all that have their place, but subs need to be heavily curated by the mods, or, like you said, they all become the same.

Thank you! I wonder if there is a way to see the % of votes from subreddit members vs others. Memes and similar sh*tposts can really ruin a subreddit in weeks.

It's probably the regulars upvoting it.

The occasional memey or off-topic post is a lot of fun and key to having a community with its own culture instead of an interest group with the personality of a dictionary entry. The problem is that people see that was fun and naturally try to do more of it, but it's only fun in the first place because of the contrast, and the off-topic stuff is usually easier to produce so it can easily drown out the on-topic posts, killing the forum.

The "delete most memes" policy is weird, but works well where I've seen it.

> but every so often something slips through and it gets so much karma.

Does that bother you? Why? If "so many" people like something, why should you or any handful of mods prevent them from seeing it?

What keeps you from deleting stuff that only you don't like, regardless of whether or not it "belongs" on the sub?

Do we just want an echo chamber?

We started using a hosted version of The Lounge for providing web based IRC and it's been working pretty well so far.

Looking through Mozilla's IRC quote collection [0] also shows very little recent activity. Not sure if that's because their channels are less active nowadays, or just because fewer people are submitting new material.

[0]: http://quotes.burntelectrons.org/top