"Shutting down" the IRC channels

Submitted by hollyhoppet admin at March 10, 2021, 10:25 PM in meta

hollyhoppet wrote at March 10, 2021, 10:58 PM

while i really don't like discord as a company i think it's important to remember that the perceived barrier to entry is way smaller than irc for non-technical people. i can't tell you how many times in the IRC's heyday people expressed not wanting to join because IRC seemed difficult to use for them.

i honestly feel like IRC and its successors (discord, slack, matrix to a degree) are major internet infrastructure, and there should be a more accessible version of it that isn't owned by a corporation but we don't really have that.

flabberghaster wrote at March 10, 2021, 11:18 PM

I was being silly, sorry. I don't actually advocate doing what I said.

twovests wrote at March 11, 2021, 12:55 AM

Tbh even IRC has a high barrier of entry for technical people who want message logs and basic privacy (i.e. ZNC).

I'm kind of shocked there isn't some free or very-cheap ZNC service out there, I'd much rather pay $5/mo to a service that does all the hard work than $5/mo to manage my own VPS.

hollyhoppet wrote at March 11, 2021, 1:07 AM

there's irccloud but that's more a web based client than a znc service

Moonside wrote at March 11, 2021, 1:42 AM

Honestly I am quite technical an user and I really haven't stumbled upon an IRC client that I really like, approximately in the same way as I enjoy using a well-designed toaster. The one I used the longest was the one in Emacs! Discord is kinda pretty ok if you forget about the corporate side.