I always saw it as a bug tbh, but reading drew's footnote on that right now, I am starting to think you and he are right!
But I think it is more complicated, because it also makes clear that IRC is not an ideal medium for many forms of messaging. It works great for free for all chat, where the discussion happens right now. But it is not great for group chats with friends or when information needs to be disseminated across a community, but I have both of these seen used often.
It just not asynchronous, while at the same time, because of the constant open connection, also not great to use on the go.
It's somehow nice to have a medium for "right here and now", but it sucks to not be able to answer a question or miss important conversation because you didn't look for 10 minutes.
Of course, multi-tier conversation options have helped traditionally, but I think that's also why i never bothered with IRC much, because it was always 3 dozen people idling who always seemed to burst in conversation once you got disconnected.
To add to this: I think IRC strikes an interesting balance between async and sync conversations -- Schrödinger's synchronization, in a sense. In public conversations, there's no expectation that anyone will be present for anything and no expectation that they should read the things they missed, which is good. However, among mutual bouncer users there's a culture of sending messages you expect to be read later, in their own time. We essentially get the best of both worlds.
I wrote a little bit about this facet of IRC culture in this article:
> because it also makes clear that IRC is not an ideal medium for many forms of messaging.
Back in the day where people used to differentiate between IRC and IMs (more importantly, chat vs messaging), I don't really think this is correct. In today's era of Discord/Slack/SMS though, it certainly would seem like a detriment. I do agree with those other people, though. What was nice about IRC (to me) was how imperative it was. You could post a cool thing, question or discussion topic in a channel and have responses coming through within the minute. When you're done, you just close the window and it's like it was never there. I remember feeling like I was using a secret spy communicator when I had IRC downloaded in middle school, the whole ephemeral nature of it was the coolest to me back then.
I don't like the framing on feature vs bug. I think it's a characteristic of IRC that made it nice in some ways, and impractical in other ways. The fact that you knew that people were "on" when they were in the channel, and see exactly how many people where "on" at some point in time was really interesting. Right now all your chat apps are persistent chats so you don't really have that feeling of really being in a "chat room" anymore.
If someone is looking for an ephemeral side-project to work on, it'd be interesting to have something like twitter that works in a similar way: you only see tweets posted when you're online on the page.
You shouldn't use IRC for low-traffic communications, or more precisely it shouldn't be used in the scenario where you want people to be able to receive messages while not connected to the channel. Email is the appropriate tool for these cases.
I don't control the message frequency or member timezone/presence of existing channels that I didn't create in the first place. Also switching back and forth between email and IRC depending on frequency sounds cumbersome to me. Some niche channels can have busy weeks while being silent on others. I like how bouncers improve the UX for that situation.
Like shipping channels in the ocean. You can't see them until a boat cuts through the water leaving a wake. There's no evidence left behind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2rGTXHvPCQ&t=18s (gibberish warning)
I don't think IRC ever had much of an expectation of privacy. Just because you didn't keep logs yourself does not mean the IRC server didn't. Using a bouncer does nothing for that.
Most IRC networks are relatively small and/or are/were run by techies with no real incentive to log everything. Also, almost everything culturally about IRC relies on trusting the IRC operators to keep things running smoothly and moderate appropriately.
UnrealIRCd (a popular IRC server implementation) have actively refused to add features in to the code-base that allow IRC operators to snoop on private messages or covertly on channels, for example.
Slack, Facebook, Reddit, and whoever else we all use these days, keep every private message ever sent logged for all time and this is just accepted.
> UnrealIRCd (a popular IRC server implementation) have actively refused
That's really moot because operators can certainly and easily snoop the traffic on the wire. Therefore I agree with the statement above that one should take IRC for what it is: lightweight, convenient, but don't assume any privacy - and it can be perfectly fine.
> UnrealIRCd (a popular IRC server implementation) have actively refused to add features in to the code-base that allow IRC operators to snoop on private messages or covertly on channels, for example.
Someone should have told Angrywolf. This module was on every "we used to be on BigNet but we split off because reasons" UnrealIRCd network for a while, haha
If is a feature in many ways, however there are usecases where it isn't applicable. If I got such a usecases the question is whether I pick a completely different chat system or use some form of bouncer as workaround.
Exactly. You don't want to know everything that's ever happened in the history of the channel, there's way too much. Even on Discord the client can't handle it so you won't know anyway.
I always saw it as a bug tbh, but reading drew's footnote on that right now, I am starting to think you and he are right!
But I think it is more complicated, because it also makes clear that IRC is not an ideal medium for many forms of messaging. It works great for free for all chat, where the discussion happens right now. But it is not great for group chats with friends or when information needs to be disseminated across a community, but I have both of these seen used often.
It just not asynchronous, while at the same time, because of the constant open connection, also not great to use on the go.
It's somehow nice to have a medium for "right here and now", but it sucks to not be able to answer a question or miss important conversation because you didn't look for 10 minutes.
Of course, multi-tier conversation options have helped traditionally, but I think that's also why i never bothered with IRC much, because it was always 3 dozen people idling who always seemed to burst in conversation once you got disconnected.
To add to this: I think IRC strikes an interesting balance between async and sync conversations -- Schrödinger's synchronization, in a sense. In public conversations, there's no expectation that anyone will be present for anything and no expectation that they should read the things they missed, which is good. However, among mutual bouncer users there's a culture of sending messages you expect to be read later, in their own time. We essentially get the best of both worlds.
I wrote a little bit about this facet of IRC culture in this article:
https://drewdevault.com/2021/11/24/A-philosophy-for-instant-...
> because it also makes clear that IRC is not an ideal medium for many forms of messaging.
Back in the day where people used to differentiate between IRC and IMs (more importantly, chat vs messaging), I don't really think this is correct. In today's era of Discord/Slack/SMS though, it certainly would seem like a detriment. I do agree with those other people, though. What was nice about IRC (to me) was how imperative it was. You could post a cool thing, question or discussion topic in a channel and have responses coming through within the minute. When you're done, you just close the window and it's like it was never there. I remember feeling like I was using a secret spy communicator when I had IRC downloaded in middle school, the whole ephemeral nature of it was the coolest to me back then.
I don't like the framing on feature vs bug. I think it's a characteristic of IRC that made it nice in some ways, and impractical in other ways. The fact that you knew that people were "on" when they were in the channel, and see exactly how many people where "on" at some point in time was really interesting. Right now all your chat apps are persistent chats so you don't really have that feeling of really being in a "chat room" anymore.
If someone is looking for an ephemeral side-project to work on, it'd be interesting to have something like twitter that works in a similar way: you only see tweets posted when you're online on the page.
It doesn't work very well for low traffic channels.
Email does. Right tool for right job.
Not sure what you mean, how does email help me follow low traffic IRC channels?
You shouldn't use IRC for low-traffic communications, or more precisely it shouldn't be used in the scenario where you want people to be able to receive messages while not connected to the channel. Email is the appropriate tool for these cases.
I don't control the message frequency or member timezone/presence of existing channels that I didn't create in the first place. Also switching back and forth between email and IRC depending on frequency sounds cumbersome to me. Some niche channels can have busy weeks while being silent on others. I like how bouncers improve the UX for that situation.
Sounds like the perfect use case for Google Wave. RIP.
Before its time. I still miss it.
are there irc2email bots?
Like shipping channels in the ocean. You can't see them until a boat cuts through the water leaving a wake. There's no evidence left behind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2rGTXHvPCQ&t=18s (gibberish warning)
It certainly gets around some of the privacy concerns you get once your platform has message persistence.
On the other hand, the mobile/cellular world has been largely responsible for killing off IRC.
I don't think IRC ever had much of an expectation of privacy. Just because you didn't keep logs yourself does not mean the IRC server didn't. Using a bouncer does nothing for that.
Most IRC networks are relatively small and/or are/were run by techies with no real incentive to log everything. Also, almost everything culturally about IRC relies on trusting the IRC operators to keep things running smoothly and moderate appropriately.
UnrealIRCd (a popular IRC server implementation) have actively refused to add features in to the code-base that allow IRC operators to snoop on private messages or covertly on channels, for example.
Slack, Facebook, Reddit, and whoever else we all use these days, keep every private message ever sent logged for all time and this is just accepted.
> UnrealIRCd (a popular IRC server implementation) have actively refused
That's really moot because operators can certainly and easily snoop the traffic on the wire. Therefore I agree with the statement above that one should take IRC for what it is: lightweight, convenient, but don't assume any privacy - and it can be perfectly fine.
> UnrealIRCd (a popular IRC server implementation) have actively refused to add features in to the code-base that allow IRC operators to snoop on private messages or covertly on channels, for example.
Someone should have told Angrywolf. This module was on every "we used to be on BigNet but we split off because reasons" UnrealIRCd network for a while, haha
https://pastebin.com/EVkudZVb
(disclaimer: don't use it for moral reasons, but also because I've not vetted the code in any way beyond checking it looks a bit like code)
If is a feature in many ways, however there are usecases where it isn't applicable. If I got such a usecases the question is whether I pick a completely different chat system or use some form of bouncer as workaround.
Exactly. You don't want to know everything that's ever happened in the history of the channel, there's way too much. Even on Discord the client can't handle it so you won't know anyway.
Same here. Works quite nicely to have tempers cool down as people dis/reconnect and lose history.