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
>>44 Needs to stop using mozilla for everything.
irc as a means to cut telephone costs is very popular where I live. also among non-nerds, because many don't want to put up with IM clients (or the popular myths about them).
the main competition to IRC here is skype and gtalk, because you no longer need to type.
Quite simply, without IRC fansubbing wouldn't even BE, so halt the discussion already!
Uh-huh. Because nobody fansubbed before IRC, right?
Counterpoint: IRC warez culture is largely responsible for the sad decline of fansubbing culture into egowhoring and 0-day warez pimping.
I can tell you the scanlation community benefitted hugely from IRC. I don't know of any significant group that doesn't have an active IRC channel.
In fact, now that torrents are becoming the norm, quite a few of us are leaving the scene altogether. Chat channels that consist of bots alone are bloody boring.
Come to think of it, >>51,51 may be related. If all the casual chatters, who are there also to leech, no longer come due to torrents, what's left? Nothing but bots.
Nothing wrong with torrents thought. Convenience is a wonderful thing.
If torrents are becoming the norm, why do you have bots at all? Point being: If people viewed IRC as a distribution medium with chat on the side, they won't come when there's a more convenient distribution medium. But the problem isn't the torrents, is that IRC is seen as a distribution medium instead of as a place to talk in the first place. You should be advertising the IRC channel as a place to come and talk to the crew instead.
This won't work for a lot of translation groups unless they drop the idiotic superior attitude, though.
> You should be advertising the IRC channel as a place to come and talk to the crew instead.
Doesn't work. Most of the groups I've been in have tried, to no avail.
People need incentive to lure them in, and chat isn't enough to convince them to install an IRC client and learn how to use it.
> chat isn't enough to convince them to install an IRC client and learn how to use it.
That's ok; you didn't want those people in your channel anyway.
Touché.
>>56
It's a good thing you posted that with a tripcode. Otherwise, I wouldn't have known to expect such an insightful comment, and I might have passed it over!
I have to poo.
>>57
Wrong thread, wrong website.
>>60
your whore is your mum. gtfo.
>>55
But if the people are there and see someone talking, they might start chatting, too, or stick around even. The chance may be small, but its there. This chance is not given if they just go and download the torrents.
Also, what happend? Is net now dqn or something?
>>That's ok; you didn't want those people in your channel anyway.
I don't see where this attitude is coming from. It doesn't do much to dissuade people from believing that IRC-users are elitist.
That was hardly elitist. If the point here is to get people into the channel to chat, there's no use enticing people who wouldn't come for the chat -- because if they do come, they won't be there for the chat, they'll be there for whatever else you were offering; and they'll leave when they're done, and probably won't chat much, if at all, while they're there. Defeating the purpose of getting them in there to begin with.
>>64 But yet, in practice, most channels are either dead silent or are tighter than a twelve year old and therefore inpenetrable to your average new visitor.
I am an average new visitor, in fact I just recently started using IRC. I only use it to download scanlations, as most groups insist on IRC being their sole distribution method. Unfortunately my 30-day free mIRC trial is running out, so I was wondering if there is a way to get around paying the registration fee. Sorry for being so cluless btw.
You could not use it. mIRC isn't the only IRC client on Earth, you know.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_IRC_clients
(It drives me nuts when people refer to IRC as a whole as mIRC. "I was talking to some friends on mIRC the other day…" KILL KILL KILL)
>>66 finding cracks for mirc is EXACTLY the kind of thing google was made for.
See you on mirc!
mIRC locks you out now? I thought it just kept nagging you.
All I remember about mIRC is khaled's squeaky nose.
>>67
I do that sometimes. And it sort of makes sense if they're actually using the Mirc client.
Like people say "I was taking on AIM"... but they probably wouldn't say that if they were using, say, Trillian.
People can also talk on the phone, but if they were talking on the phone through Skype, they would probably say they're talking on Skype.
I wouldn't. I have no idea how to pronounce "Skype".
>>72
I pronounce it so that it rhymes with "hype."
Appropriate.
If you have a group of ppl (geeks or not), IRC is still the fastest method to get them talking.
TeamSpeak and similar programs come next if you don't want to type.
Their strength lies in the ability to put up your channel (or even server) in no time and not having to go through stoopid registration process.
In many IRC web sites all the n00b must do is click on a button to load the IRC applet.
That said, most of the public channels on IRC are total crap. Apart from the fact that nowadays it's so difficult finding a chan with a conversation going, the most annoying thing is that in some fields (like, say, the Linux channels), it's almost impossibile for a normal homo sapiens to start a conversation or befriend the patrons without being bullied, ridicolized then ignored and eventually banned if he keeps trying to communicate. And this holds true equally for n00bs or skilled individuals.
I think the main difference with the corporation-backed networks is that while in those you find ppl who go there to actually CHAT (and if they don't want to chat they log off), in most IRC chans ppl simply "stay" to show off that they are there.
I agree that lots of damage in IRC has been done by the warez scene tradition which has been the cradle for some of the worst moronic attitudes seen in history imho, many of their holier-than-thou attitudes have been passed in some form to other tech communities.
It is also the fastest method to get them to start typing things like "ppl".
Maybe it's the fact you're getting older, so the people you used to talk to on irc are moving on and doing other things. Neither myself nor anyone I used to associate with on it use it anymore, because we're too busy doing whatever (finishing university, working etc). Things like LJ or forums cater to our 'needs' better, since we're rarely online at the same time.
I dunno what the youngins are doing nowadays. Myspace is too hideous to look at for more than a few seconds, so I'm not really interested in it.
Language is used to communicate. Making it harder for others to understand you is a hindrance to that end.
The presentation says something about the writer as well.
irc isn't dead, a lot of people still use it. I'll admit though, most of the people who use it are either
1) tech geeks
2) "underground" internet users
or combinations of the both
I find IRC a wonderful way to keep up with my online contacts, as the room I run usually has 10-15 people in it at a time and discussion is almost always going. Better than using a one-on-one IM client, at least to me.
Maybe we are asking the wrong questions. How about this:
It works for the kind of people who have the free time to while away hours idling on a channel between chats.
>>82
1)because some people want interaction from their social activities while irc users are content to just idle.
2)antisocial nerds on powertrips
/join #4chan on rizon and then tell me that IRC is dead
>>88
I was going to say, if that's what "live IRC" looks like, I want no part of it.
Remember when people complained about IRC instead of Discord?
sips monster
IRC failed because nobody remembers how to read anymore. Books are dead too.
I am going to see if IRC works over i2p now.
IRC let lives, IRC always lives.
Books ain't dead. ebooks may be digital but they still are books.
A major part of is it that the original IRC protocol doesn't do well in a world where most connections are ephemeral (smartphones, laptops). No one wants to run a persistent bouncer session just to view past messages. Other lesser things are that the original protocol doesn't handle rich media formats gracefully, so things such as images require nonstandard extensions.
There's also a concerted efforts by companies to favor their own walled-garden platforms over open interconnects (slack used to supprot irc but no longer, google used to support xmpp/gchat interconnect but no longer) so development on irc is practically frozen as no one's going to bother fleshing out and implementing the ircv3 standard.
The closest thing to a modern irc is the matrix protocol, but last time I tried it was really janky compared to irc. Plus development on that is spearheaded almost entirely by one company and I'm not sure there are even any alternate server implementations.
deltachat but for IRC when.