[anthk]

It's an example on the trivialness on using it, you can get a client anywhere, like gopher.

SSL/TLS is broken and you need help over IRC? No problem. Your main PC broke and all you have is a 486/Amiga/Atari or even some PDA connected to the router with a gateway? No issues again.

You just have a installed base, your pkg manager is broken and all you have is netcat, a shell and Unix utilities? Go on.

[na85]

>SSL/TLS is broken and you need help over IRC? No problem. Your main PC broke and all you have is a 486/Amiga/Atari or even some PDA connected to the router with a gateway? No issues again.

>You just have a installed base, your pkg manager is broken and all you have is netcat, a shell and Unix utilities? Go on.

I understood what you meant. But when would any of those scenarios occur and you don't have your phone, and thus access to Matrix/Discord/whatever?

IRC has awful UX on a phone, and I say this as a guy with a sophisticated weechat+Pushbullet setup going on. The benefits of being able to get on IRC from your NetBSD toaster aren't really benefits at all because you always have a phone. Users want slack/discord-like presence. They want push notifications on hilights. They don't want to have to futz about with znc or tmux+irssi.

IRC failed to keep up with the tastes of modern users and that's why it's been slowly hemorrhaging users for 15 years.

[welterde]

> They want push notifications on hilights.

Huh? Pretty much all mobile irc clients have that though?

And if you are running weechat anyway, something like weechat-android might be an better option for you? That connects back to weechat using the weechat relay protocol.

[na85]

>Pretty much all mobile irc clients have that though?

Sure but the connection drops a lot if you roam, if you close the app you don't stay connected, etc. Discord does not have this problem.

>And if you are running weechat anyway, something like weechat-android might be an better option for you?

You're missing the point. I already run weechat-android but it's not about me. It's about people who have grown up accustomed to more modern and mobile-friendly applications. If the only way to get multi-device sync with push notifications is to run weechat in a tmux on a shell and install/sign up for Pushbullet, that's awful UX. Too much friction, to say nothing of the idea that the best way to use IRC is to sign up for a third party shell account.

I hate discord but it's a breeze to onboard people to your server.

[welterde]

> Sure but the connection drops a lot if you roam, if you close the app you don't stay connected, etc. Discord does not have this problem.

Yeah that mobile networking is completely broken is a bit unfortunate. But at least the staying connected in the background part works just fine for me (Also works fine with my jabber client).

Not sure why you still need pushbullet if you are already using weechat-android though (and not saying that I would recommend that for everyone.. something like IRCCloud is more suitable for non-technical people I would say). Or is it weechat-android specifically that has the problem of not being able to run in the background for you?

[na85]

Weechat-android might not drop because it's a relay client. But try running a non-relay client and see how it goes.

Anyways it's like you're intentionally missing the point. I'm not here for tech support with my setup. I'm trying to explain why IRC's user experience is inferior to Discord for most users.

[welterde]

I tried with a normal IRC client on Android. And like I said it also works with my Jabber client, which I have been running for years now and never had problems with missed notifications or anything there, despite it also requiring a open TCP connection to work.

The only thing is it's less nice for the _other_ irc users in the channels if they don't have filtering setup to get rid of those extra joins/quits if you are in a bad connectivity area (unless you are running a server that itself hides them). But for onboarding that makes no difference at all.

However the sore points come a bit later with most servers having no server-side history, integrated bouncer, etc. (which would all require a bouncer or tmux+weechat, which I totally agree is not for everyone)

If you want all that you are limited to exactly one ircd currently (Oragono) that has integrated bouncer (so no need to run weechat/znc to stay "connected"), server side history (same history on all your devices and also not loosing anything on disconnect) and multi-session support (being online with multiple clients using same nick). Some of those features are slowly diffusing to other ircds and from there to irc networks, but that takes time.