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joshuat

IRC → perfection, impossible to improve

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No message history while not logged in.

IRCv3 (and many clients are supporting fair chunks of IRCv3's feature set) supports offline state and message history.

That's a feature

I would love to know why it's considered a feature for you.

I remember messing with bouncers and reading the backlog from a 3rd party page. Bots that would ping other members when they come online. It was cumbersome.

Because I prefer online conversations to work like IRL ones: Ephemeral. Sure each individual might keep their own log if they want but the server itself doesn’t and setting aside all the issues with modern datasets being used for training all sorts of algorithms, just the concept of stepping into a digital room without all the baggage of the last twenty hours of conversation is _mentally refreshing_. It also changes people’s behaviour for the better IME.

Saving logs is gross, chats should be ephemeral. In any case there's HistServ and IRCv3 /chathistory nowadays, so if you really want it you can have it.

That all the minute garbage everyone posts is preserved forever in an unfiltered state I think is a root cause of the mental degradation that results from using Discord: kids don't have anywhere to 'post into the void' anymore. Preserving past events and relationships through oral history as opposed to a big monolithic search engine entails a far more human element to IRC.

But on IRC you had your own log, and sometimes the server made the full logs public. It was just cumbersome to access. What I said and you said in my presets was still logged.

It's a muddy middle ground where neither you are I are satisfied. Far from perfect.

I wanted to disagree but I really miss IRC internet. Saving everything we ever said online was a mistake. We need to focus on ephemeral chat making a comeback.

IRC still exists at a semi large scale. If you're looking to return

Saving logs has been essential for work, in the past, because we were always to write real documentation when necessary. Mind you, this was local to our machine.

To a modern audience, it's definitely not.

Liability

isn't IRC only Text? What about the Voice Chat?

IRC does not even have offline messages, unless you pay / host a bouncer. Which you first have to know about.

I'm not sure if any client has solve this, but what about image / video / file hosting? You can't just drag 'n drop a image into a chat. You have to host it on a 3rd party site and link it.

I do wonder how server management is now adays. In Discord you can host your own server with a few clicks and make it easy to adjust permissions and controls invites. I would assume IRC is also lacking behind. But would love to hear more about the current state.

Discord has invite links, where people without the app or account can quickly join. In IRC you have the IRC:// link, but that does not work for people who don't have a client installed. Then you can do a web client link, but that is not optimal for people who already have their favorite client set up :)

In Discord you can't "host" your own "server". You can create a room (internally called a guild, misleadingly referred to as "server" in ui and by a lot of people) on THE discord server, their server, and that room can be split into channels. But the room and the server belongs to discord.

You are correct. I used Discord terminology where a "server" is a group of channels.

First and foremost, IRC is a protocol. Everything you name here are mostly issues that are not a protocol problem, but client and service issues which can be solved.

But are they solved? In a single combined client.

Otherwise it's not really an alternative. It does not matter if it's technically a protocol. Users don't care about if it's a protocol, IRC clients had over 10 years to catch up.

What a uselessly pedantic response.

Are they solved, in practice, in the real world? For users in general? No? Then what's the point of discussing it right now?

That's why you have Mumble.

https://www.mumble.info/

Share a meme?

Use the channel's DC-hub.

Yes, GP already said it was perfection

Except the reason for Discords initial success, and the literal only reason I have it installed, is for voice chat when playing certain online games.

I love IRC, I even wrote my own IRC client in the 90s, but it’s clearly not going to be suitable for gaming in this context.

IRC for main chat, Mumble for voice chat when gaming. Been solid for decades. I have at least 3 functional Mumble servers saved (including my own) in my client, most of them are associated with an IRC community. I occasionally hear "Anyone down for some Quake? Hop on Mumble." or something to that effect. Mumble is pretty easy to host, so if you're using it with a small to medium group of friends, I'd say just throw up a server on your LAN somewhere. It's got decent mobile clients on F-Droid as well if you need one.

Not all gamers are techies though.

Some of my gaming buddies on Discord needed help getting that properly working. Asking them to set up and use both IRC and Mumble would be a step too far.

This is a common trap HN falls into. Stuff that’s easy and practical for people of our capabilities can be a nightmarish hellscape for other people.

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