It's widely banned for its tendency to be a DDoS lightningrod, and only slightly less infamous for its impenetrable cliques of time-wasting losers. Was IRC just in the wrong place at the wrong time, or is the protocol responsible for its own failure? And how could we do better?
Discuss!
>>1 IRC was wildly successful until the advent of GUI-based chat clients lured away normal people who simply want to socialise. After AOL and Yahoo stole the well balanced users away from IRC, all that was left was imbalanced and mentally unstable people. Those who had computer skills turned to piracy and hacking; the rest lurk quietly hoping to impress gullible visitors into thinking that they're too important to chat.
In short, IRC was a victim of changing times and technology.
It doesn't seem to have failed to me...
I don't understand why people complain about idiots on IRC. Visit channels with less adolescents, or create your own. You don't need to listen to people on IM, and that applies to IRC too.
Wait, what? When did IRC fail?
It's still going strong, so far as I can tell. Usenet has rotted away since web-based forums became popular, but thus far there hasn't been a superior alternative to IRC. It's remarkably flexible and seems to have been created with incredible foresight for users' needs (another failing of Usenet). Heck, I was using it earlier today, talking in #macintosh on UnderNet about the Boot Camp announcement.
And where is it widely banned? It works on every ISP I've tried it with.
>>3-4
Go on a non-techical/non-deviant art board and ask about IRC; enjoy the blank looks and stoopid answers. Find the non-geek people you know in real life and repeat the experience (but this time the looks are in person).
Real people don't get IRC; normal people either don't know what it is, or don't care once you explain it to them. Once they hear about IRC, mostly they want to know why someone would bother using a form of chat that has less features than yahoo chat. And you have to hand it to them; they have a point.
Yet at the same time, more people are using IRC networks now than ever before. So I wouldn't call it a failure. It's thriving, it just hasn't had the same growth as the mainstream IM.
Having said that, there are a number of shortcomings in IRC that irritate me (DCC being the biggest one), and I'm tempted to lay them solely at the feet of mIRC. It helped make IRC more popular on Windows, yet now it's holding things back.
> more people are using IRC networks now than ever before.
I should correct that. There were probably more people using IRC in 2003 (?). Then BitTorrent hit it big, so there was a lot less reason to visit IRC.
may i ask what world you people are living in?
IRC is as unkillable as file sharing, and for pretty much the same reasons
viz:
>>8
Not yours, that's for sure. IRC for discussion is pretty much dead, but I guess people still use it to share files? Doesn't seem like the greatest method, though...
> No-one can ever have absoloute control over every IRC network in existance.
If that was an argument normal people cared about, I think jabber would be more populare.
It seems thouse IM networks that dominate have a big corperation holding it in place. I hope this turns out to be the case with jabber too, now that google based its IM client on it.
>>9
It's ok for mp3s, except that for $25 you can go to allofmp3 and get a far wider selection of mp3s and you don't have to fuck around with disconnects/incomplete files and you have a wider selection of tunes to choose from.
>>11 crap, I didn't mean to mention the selection twice, lol!
> IRC for discussion is pretty much dead, but I guess people still use it to share files?
I have to disagree. About the only thing I use IRC for nowadays is chat. Of course, this is just anecdotal, but I doubt I'm in some way unusual. It's really a matter of what channels you visit.
There's a lot less incentive to use IRC for warez and mp3s since the advent of BitTorrent.
Well, DCC was always rather hackishly-implemented anyway, or so it seemed to me. IRC is a chat protocol, not a file-sharing protocol.
>>11: Using AllofMP3 is piracy, unless you live in Russia. If you're going to pirate music, you should at least not pay pirates to help you do it...
>>14
THat's not that cut-and-dried. Is it pirating, or is it importing? If it's importing, is it illegal?
I didn't know works produced before 1973 are public domain in Russia. That's actually halfway reasonable. Hooray for Russia!
keep in mind, it's easier for stupid people to access the internet now. The sheer number of people that barely know how to turn on their computer are "surfing the web". so to ask a random person online about IRC and recieving a blank look says nothing about the growth of IRC because just because it's not growing as fast as the population of the internet, doesn't mean it's not growing.
Damn, what the hellcrap? IRC, dead? Holy shit, and I never noticed!
Seriously though, that the mouth-breathers have moved onto drool-proof thingamabobs these days can only be a good thing. Underground is where it's at.
>>19
There's still a few around, but it's certainly getting better. I say we should all congratulate MSN/AIM/etc heartily for saving IRC.
MSN?
AIM?
WTF have they got to do w/ IRC?
WTF is wrong with your reading comprehension, idiot?
And what the fuck is wrong with you people who can't be bothered to spell out your words? This isn't IRC, and this is the grown-up internet. You are supposed to actually write the words you want to say.
Well, IRC may have failed because it's widely considered to be more for computer programmers and script kiddies than anyone else. Though, well, I know plenty of people who are neither computer programmers nor script kiddies, or are at least ones who will chat about things other than computer programming and showing off their "leet skills."
IRC fails because it's crap.
1)The interface? Crap (they don't even have smileys for fuck's sake!).
2)The networks? Crap.
3)The users? TOTAL Elitist crap.
Frankly, the question isn't why IRC failed; but why it's lasted as long as it has. Why is it that irc hasn't joined gopher is CLI oblivion?
I like to think as jabber to be the next irc
>>26
Erm what?
> The interface? Crap (they don't even have smileys for fuck's sake!)
So use a different client. I may find bitchX to be very easy to use, others may prefer xchat or mirc or whatever.
> The networks? Crap.
What is your problem with the networks? Ping time? Availability? If that is the case, use a different network. There are like hundreds of them.
> The users? TOTAL Elitist crap.
Ehm yea rite. And here in germany, EVERYONE is a nazi, and all the people in the USA like to go to war ALL THE TIME!
By the way, >>8 sort of made that point already, but can anyone name a replacement for IRC, an app which can do multiuser multichannel chat and has clients for all the major operating systems? I don't think such an app currently exists.
Right now, its just much easier to get 9 non-geek persons to download an IRC client and have them join a channel ("Install this, set your name and then type /server someserver and /j #somechannel") than to get them to download an instant messaging app and have them join a group chat. ("Dowload some client, register an account here, click the activation link in your email, enter your account info in the client..." )
> (they don't even have smileys for fuck's sake!)
I think you need to reconsider your priorities.
A number of clients do have smilies, but I think this was a troll.
>>25
I'm not seeing how this is indicative of failure.
>>27
Me too. All my buddies use Jabber these days (well, most of them do).
Some problems I had with IRC during my brief use of it:
1) Finding relevant downloads or chatrooms was nearly impossible, whether due to amazingly irrelevant room descriptions that often advertised files but ended up being nearly or completely empty. Just not worth the effort. I didn't notice any search command that could help me in this case.
2) Finding a chatroom with people talking was also pretty difficult. Even if I was so lucky, chances are they'd ignore you or they'd discuss something so personal no one else would know what the fuck they were talking about. Like >>25 said, there's also a ton of people that go on forever talking about programming or whatever, which is great if you can understand that shit.
3) People seemed to get pissed if you download shit, even though they leave the max downloads really high.
4) Downloads were usually extremely slow for me even with ports open etc., if they worked at all.
>1)
Channels that need to advertise having files are invariably crap, with no-one in them. Channels with plenty of fserves and decent files don't need to advertise (you will hear about them on the grapevine, as it were, if you're a regular in channels where people talk -- see #2).
>2)
Most people using IRC aren't doing so as an exclusive activity. As long as you don't expect them to be (and don't yourself) you'll be fine (and sooner or later a conversation will start). Also, like everywhere else, people are suspicious of newcomers. They will open up and will be more likely to converse with you once they are used to seeing you around. Eventually, if you earn their respect, you will be able to start conversations yourself.
>3)
I don't know what this is about, but then it's been a fair while since I've hung out in fserve chans. Maybe you're in the wrong place; or maybe things have changed; or maybe they're pissed at you for something else and you're misinterpreting them.
>4)
Of course they are. Chances are, the person at the other end is using their net connection themselves; it's only natural to expect them to upload to you slowly. Be grateful that they're sacrificing some of their bandwidth for your benefit. Especially if you're not actually serving files yourself.
>>26
The only one of those points that was actually true was the smiley one. The rest depend on which servers/channels you hang out in.
...and does this board even have smileys? :)
>>34
That "suspicious of newcomers... earn their respect" thing really requires a lot of free time to do. I wonder if something more anonymous could be made. I like these boards because you can stumble upon the site and 20 seconds later make a good point and people will listen, but IRC is the opposite of that.
>>33: Again, IRC is a chat protocol, not a filesharing one. If all you care about are nabbing files, go use Kazaa or something.
And yet, sharing files is a very common use. By the same token, if you want to chat, why not AIM, MSN, or Jabber or whatever?
A GAIM is fine too.
>>36
It's not much different from a normal community, unlike wakaba-style anonymity, which is.
"Normal" is a highly subjective concept.
Good for it. What happens if I want to talk to 20 or 50 or even 100 people? Chat protocols fail in this department because each client broadcasts to each member, instead of a server handling this shit instead.
>And yet, sharing files is a very common use.
True, but it's not an intended use. Filesharing via IRC is implemented very hackishly, what with fserves and "credits" and all that crap. So any complaining about it, especially when there are perfectly fine alternatives like BitTorrent and Gnutella, just isn't valid, just like you can't whine that your email client sucks at FTPing.
>>43 needs a better email client