It was a collection of silly quotes from IRC channels everywhere, many of which dated back to the 90s. It was rarely ever updated in the 2010s, but now, the URL no longer resolves.
Last capture was July 2023. https://web.archive.org/web/20230601000000*/bash.org
EDIT Someone archived all the quotes on the Internet Archive.
IRC was so much better than Discord. People are stupid.
I have used both, aside from the monetisation (Nitro), Discord (and Slack) has a lot more functionality. Not sure it’s ‘correct’ to say that people are stupid because they prefer a 21st century version of IRC.
I hope you don’t mind me linking https://explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1782:_Team_Chat
Except the lack of a decent mobile client that doesn’t require you to self-host something to receive all messages
This is genuinely the only problem why we switched to Signal for work communication. My colleagues wanted us developers to use Slack and other proprietary stuff but IRC was enough. Only issue was that you couldn’t get push notifications on mobile.
I asked about a good mobile client for Android, and was recommended Revolution IRC.
I mainly use it to keep an eye on my IRC server, but it’s worked well so far
I’ve lost a lot of my rose tint for discord, right around the arbitration clause thing, but I can’t deny that it’s convenient. Chat, streaming to friends, popping up a new server for whatever project or group, VC for playing games together. There’s platforms that do all of these things better, but few that do all of them decently well.
Of course, it’s a privacy nightmare and I stick to IRC for anything I wouldn’t feel comfortable having linked to my identity, but I wouldn’t call people stupid for using it.
Mostly I think its fine for all that.
But there’s a special circle of hell for projects that rely on it for “documentation”.
I get the temptation, I really do. But once you’re taking money or have more than a couple people involved and semi-organized you really need at least a small wiki/git-hub landing page with the basics.
I know documentation is a separate skillset and a lot of work in its own right but projects can also stagnate and die because there isn’t any.
Oh 1000% agree, having a discord for support is nice and all, but using it as a crutch in place of good documentation is a sin worthy of eternal damnation.
Or maybe… How is discord any worse of a privacy nightmare than IRC? I love me some IRC, but it ain’t exactly a bastion of secrecy.
Closed source software without end to end encryption and has access to all chats, voice and video calls. How can it not be a privacy nightmare. You have no idea what they collect and what they don’t.
I haven’t used irc for years but isn’t it all plaintext unencrypted? And isnt your ip tied to it?
I’ve never looked into any of that for irc so maybe I’m way off base.
I do remember making my own fvwm config where an irssi irc terminal would slide out of the top of my screen with a hotkey and roll back up again. I was pretty proud of that.
It was better before, now non tech savy people prefer something I don’t like, therefore they are stupid.
No it’s not cause it’s easy to use, it’s cause Discord is controlled by a single company with various features behind paywalls and only one functional client app.
None of the paid features are necessary for effectively using it, they’re just “fun add-ons”
No API for third party apps is a genuine complaint though, it would be nice if there was at least some competitive push for them to have to strive to meet pushing them to be better
No, you still have to link them externally. Not that I mind tbh, I don’t even have embedded image view in xmpp enabled.
I find it difficult to get started. I have the client and everything but had trouble finding communities on irc.
Which communities do you find are worthwhile? Like others have mentioned everything I’ve pursued has definitely felt like a ghost town.
Very sorry, but it’s quite personal. Ye, I had a similar problem. First started by joining random servers preset in Hexchat (so was on the big ones), but now I am mostly on the small networks. It just happened like that.
Any guides on how to get started on IRC? I gave it a try a couple months ago but couldn’t find any good communities.
IRC is only text chat, Discord does a ton of other things on top.
Personally I’ve been on the internet for the last… 27 years or so? I’ve used ICQ, Teamspeak, Skype, IRC, Mumble, Discord, Teams, … (Probably forgot a few).
I never really liked IRC, yes, it’s private servers which is nice, yes you can be relatively anonymous, but the channels were always a mess. Either too many people spamming so you can’t follow a single conversation, or for most channels you had 40 people idling and never responding, so it felt like a ghost town.
Just in my personal experience Discord works a lot better and is far more convenient. But yeah, not much privacy there obviously (though everything you said in IRC was often saved away by a bot, so either way whatever you said was out there).
Sure, but when everybody’s Discord content vanishes behind a paywall, or makes you watch a 2 minute advert to see a Wiki, what are you going to do?
Already I can’t just browse the content on a Discord community without “joining” and all that bollocks.
Like I’m sure Discord is better than IRC, but it’s not better than a collection of open standards so anyone can run a server.
I’ve never seen someone host a wiki on Discord… that’s just stupid.
Having to join a server before you see its content is a good thing though. It’s a privacy feature and also anti-spam / anti-bots (Before you see anything you often have to agree to the server rules).
Using Discord for information storage is obviously a bad idea. But for text chat including channels, voice chat and so on it’s fantastic. Most games usually have an extra website with a wiki for information.
Just in my personal experience Discord works a lot better and is far more convenient
Your personal experience is biased as fuck because having to go through phone verification or downloading a sketchy proprietary client is in no way far more convenient than firing up irc
Either too many people spamming so you can’t follow a single conversation, or for most channels you had 40 people idling and never responding, so it felt like a ghost town.
How is this different to Discord? You have huge, medium and small channels in both.
Most IRC servers I’ve been to had exactly one channel for the entire community/topic where everyone hung out. Either way, IRC is dead, it’s just fun how triggered some people get about it.
Amen. Guess it’s the curse of the unknowing youth. They grow up with this bullcrap. I hate discord so much. “oh buy nitro, have stupid stickers!” ugh.
I really really really miss IRC. What was wrong with it? Why did it die? Did we all die?
It is alive and well, never died. Many project still use it for communication, support…
ICQ was nice. It had an IM, a user directory, and alternative clients without games etc, until its owners went crazy.
Old Skype was nice. It had fast file transfers, a good Linux client, network efficiency etc, until Microsoft.
I think everybody thought that just like from proprietary ICQ everybody went to proprietary Skype and it was nice, there’s going to be an equally good alternative when Skype rots and people will move to it.
There are fscking none among the popular IMs.
ICQ … when you haven’t logged in for a bit and then when you do your computer emits a fast-paced streak of uh-ohuh-ohuh-ohuh-ohuh-ohuh-ohuh-ohuh-oh
Better how? I can’t message people when they’re offline, everything is completely boring text, no images, it’s not clear how I can easily setup my own server, everything feels archaic.
I tried using it before Discord was even a thing, and I already thought it quite sucked. If you think it’s great, then good on you for knowing everything inside and out, but the discoverability with any IRC client tends to be in the negatives. It feels awful to use.
everything is completely boring text, no images
You literally just listed some of the reasons IRC is better. That said, I don’t see any reason an IRC client couldn’t be made to support images, with the understanding that it would have to be done in a way that falls back to posting it as a link for people using text-only clients, but that shouldn’t be too difficult.
can’t message people when they’re offline,
This functionality can be enabled on IRC servers or on a per-channel basis using bots.
it’s not clear how I can easily setup my own server.
Again an advantage of IRC. Not every group of 2 people need their own server. And a simple 2 second Google search (or learning your IRC client) will show you how to create your own channel in seconds.
the discoverability with any IRC client tends to be in the negatives.
That really depends on the client. There are (or at least used to be) plenty of user-friendly IRC clients. How many alternate clients can I use with Discord?
And heaven forbid someone should have to think for more than 3 seconds when learning something new to them.
I swear I sometimes think that once all of us Gen-Xers are gone, there won’t be anyone left who actually understands how the Internet or the technology that runs on it actually works, as prophesied by Idiocracy.
