by radarsat1 on 5/19/22, 7:35 AM
Can people explain what they like about IRC? I've often found the idea of having a community chat around some topic quite intriguing, but in practice when I've tried briefly joining such communities, I simply don't last long, as it doesn't grab my attention. Rooms tend to have tens or a hundred people joined, but saying nothing, until someone has a problem they want to talk about or question they want to ask, which is either answered quickly, or devolves into seeing that no one can help them, eg. because what they are asking doesn't make sense or is too mbitious or whatnot. Then silence again. In other words I've never gotten a clear sense of "community", but rather a forum for random and often uninteresting questions, and therefore just naturally stop visiting. All in all it just kind of gets boring very fast, I find, so I am curious how people manage to get something out of it and what motivates them to stay joined in a channel.
I haven't tried newer systems like Matrix or Discord so I have no idea if these do any better, or if so, why, although I am consistently surprised by the number of requests posted to reddit to 'join our discord community'. (My reaction is always kind of, well, we're here in this reddit where there is already a community, so..)
My point is not to dis on IRC/chat rooms here, just explaining why I've never particularly found it engaging, and so I'm curious what others see in it, as I feel it's something I could learn to appreciate if I tried a bit harder.
by junon on 5/19/22, 11:00 AM
Woah, been a year already. I remember sitting on mIRC for hours and hours watching the users flood into libera and out of freenode.
I will never forget how absolutely gobstricken I was with how perfectly the Libera team executed everything, and they were so incredibly polite through what has to be some of the densest chaos one could witness on the internet.
Really historic day. Happy birthday, Libera!
by nickdothutton on 5/19/22, 9:01 AM
One of the biggest selling points of IRC is that large numbers of people are not on it, and will never be on it.
by LeoPanthera on 5/19/22, 6:15 AM
The fact that this doesn't even mention Freenode is hilarious, and so awkward. Whoever wrote this had to really go out of their way to construct a history that isn't technically wrong, but, if you didn't know that Libera got its start as a fork of Freenode that almost everyone wanted to leave as soon as possible, you'd never figure it out.
by czernobog on 5/19/22, 6:53 AM
Dear lord, it's been a year already? It feels like it was only yesterday when Freenode was trying to take over every other channel on their network.
Glad to see Libera doing alright
by rkangel on 5/19/22, 11:11 AM
I'm going to take this opportunity to point out that (for me at least) the best IRC client is Matrix. They offer a bridge to Libera.chat, and that then sets up a Matrix "room" for each IRC channel you join.
You then get a consistent session, that all history automatically, with clients for every platform. Plus you're on Matrix which is a good thing :)
by yardstick on 5/19/22, 6:24 AM
by jolmg on 5/19/22, 6:34 AM
by saghul on 5/19/22, 7:12 AM
While I'm no longer using IRC, I'm happy to see Libera.Chat succeed. Godspeed!
by oynqr on 5/19/22, 7:02 AM
Not hard to remember, since it's also my birthday. Thank you, Libera, for being one of the players keeping IRC alive.
by someotherperson on 5/19/22, 6:53 AM
I think Freenode helped serve as a lesson to rasengan on a few things:
1. Technical prowess doesn't supersede the value of interpersonal/social abilities
2. Money doesn't let you control the narrative in a free system
3. Elon Musk isn't Elon Musk because he's rich, he's Elon Musk because he's good at marketing
4. Reputation is everything
It's a shame that the cost of these lessons was the destruction of Freenode and further fragmentation of IRC, and hopefully the recovery continues. It was great to see everyone united for a brief moment though, regardless of your views against Freenode or any particular channel it was widely accepted that it was a horrible move and everyone resisted the hostile takeover.
by akselmo on 5/19/22, 10:24 AM
Happy birthday libera chat! I use matrix to connect there because im a heretic, but im glad i can do that.
by hericium on 5/19/22, 6:17 AM
And fuck you, past 19 May 2021 Freenode.
by jokoon on 5/19/22, 9:43 AM
I wonder if discord might threaten IRC, it seems that is not the case.
There are two servers dedicated to the c++ language.
by JulianMorrison on 5/19/22, 10:36 AM
by webring on 5/21/22, 4:39 AM
I was on freenode off and on for many years...the ex staff that now runs libera are some of the most sad toxic ego maniacs on the internet. These people were never professional or kind, they've always been immature and obsessed with power and control to the point that the old freenode owner had to sell quietly to try and avoid riling up these neck beards...her efforts were in vain of course because per mo one of the lead freenode admins threw a tantrum and locked out the new owner by changing passwords...liberal can celebrate all it wants, it's leaders are terrible people who love to abuse the little power that they have. Irc in general is inherently awful and I'm glad it's almost completely dead. Keep faking dem connection stats and spamming "off topic" whaaa
by Vladimof on 5/19/22, 12:01 PM
I wish that Libera Chat would obfuscate user hostnames in the WHOIS...
by tentacleuno on 5/19/22, 8:20 AM
Happy birthday libera.chat! Thank you very much to the founders for providing this free and open platform :-)
