Re: irc.debian.org
On Tue, May 02, 2006 at 04:55:15PM -0700, Paul Johnson wrote:
> On Tuesday 02 May 2006 16:19, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
> > As it is, IRC *does* have non-sucking non-graphic clients. If you think
> > people should switch to Jabber, I think you ought to write such a
> > client, not someone who's not interested in using Jabber in the first
> > place.
>
> All the concole Jabber clients I've come across suit me fine. I can't
> program for a variable that I can't perceive.
Granted. And since I don't use (nor want) non-graphic jabber clients
myself, I'll leave it at that.
> > > > for the usual one to one communication it might be ok, but for
> > > > groupchat (and thats what most people do on IRC it simply sucks.
> > >
> > > By design, IRC encourages people to do truly obnoxious things, like
> > > spamming the channel to announce they're going away,
> >
> > That's not really the design of IRC; rather, it's the design of some
> > clients.
>
> It's a misfeature in clients caused by the bad design of IRC: It lacks
> presence information, which people do find important. Just not
> channelworthy.
So use a client that doesn't suck, and that doesn't spam your channel.
It's possible.
> > > or indicating their status with nicknames (which also spams the
> > > channel). You also get spammed on IRC whenever someone joins or
> > > leaves a channel.
> >
> > Most IRC clients allow those to be switched off. Personally, I happen to
> > like them.
>
> s/most/none/. I just tried irssi, ircii, kopete, and ejabberd's IRC
> clients. None have this.
I don't know all clients, but irssi surely does. As does xchat, which,
rather than irssi, is my personal irc-client of choice.
You need to ignore some messages (see Joerg's post for an explanation of
how that's done). Note that if you ignore them, in xchat that means they
don't appear in the chat window, not that the list of people on the
channel isn't updated.
> > > Jabber prevents this by providing a real presence system.
> >
> > IRC has a real presence system, too.
>
> An /away command nobody uses doesn't a presence system make.
So use auto-away, which at least irssi and xchat do support (and
probably every reasonably modern IRC client on the planet).
> > > Nicknames changes, joins and parts aren't spammed to the channel
> > > unless your client adds them in for you (but changes are still
> > > reflected in the listing of who is in the chat).
> >
> > Joins and parts you already mentioned. Nickname changes? I wouldn't know
> > why the fsck you *wouldn't* want to be informed of those.
>
> Because nobody changes their nicknames on IRC anymore, it's always from
> something like "retard" to "retard-doingMyWife" or something similarly
> presence-related.
<Yoe> I don't understand why people like to change their nicknames
<someoneElse> I do
<Yoe> Explain?
<Foo> Well, it's sometimes nice, especially if you want to confuse people
> > > Jabber networks don't go on begging sprees for funding.
> >
> > Hell yes they do. My Jabber server administrator has sent me some
> > "please support my bandwidth" request in the past.
>
> Switch servers. You can still get to the same group chats from any Jabber
> server. So far, that one Jabber admin that doesn't quite get it out of
> dozens.
Yeah, and I can go ahead and ask everyone in my list of contact to go
and please update their contact list. Thanks, but no thanks.
[...]
> > > IRC was a good early effort, but 20 years have passed and IRC is still
> > > plagued by the same problems it started with and shows no signs of
> > > improvement over time, just like Windows. Isn't it time the world
> > > moved on already?
> >
> > Move on to what? A protocol that broadcasts whether I'm online to
> > everyone I've ever chatted with?
>
> Jabber doesn't do that, nor am I sure I understand where you get that
> impression. You have to explicitly authorize people to subscribe to your
> presence information, it's not something that gets broadcast to other users
> without your approval.
Okay, so perhaps I was being a bit too much of a smartass here. Still,
there are times when I would want to use IRC when I don't want to reveal
to my brother or whoever that I'm online. Sure, some clients allow me to
do just that, but it's not the default.
--
Fun will now commence
-- Seven Of Nine, "Ashes to Ashes", stardate 53679.4
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