WHY AREN'T YOU FUCKERS IN IRC?

How can any chat application benefit us, if all we do there is talk about crap all day?

People are going to gravitate to the client that is easiest and most satisfying for them to use. "You should use this thing because I use it" and "Sure it's not the easiest to use but you should use it anyway" are not compelling arguments. I'm someone who used IRC for years and did roleplaying in it, and I still would rather not use it when alternatives are available.

author=KingArthur
But remember, RMN is a collection of game developers, we are geeks and engineers, intellectuals and professionals. It's kind of ridiculous to me that game developers find IRC difficult or impossible to use. If you are working with programming and developing software, command-line interfaces should be familiar and second nature to you.

There are plenty of people here contributing to games that don't do coding. Artists, writers and composers are all vital to the process. You cannot assume that all of RMN is just like you, and telling people "you should know how to do this" is not going to win them back to IRC.

"Why isn't anyone using IRC?"

"Here's why."

"YOUR REASONS ARE BAD AND WRONG YOU SHOULD BE USING IRC!!!"

author=CashmereCat

author=iddalai
How can any chat application benefit us, if all we do there is talk about crap all day?

Well for instance my team collaborated and made a game using Slack as our channel, I've discussed ideas there that eventuate into products, and also just having fun.

I see, but from my perspective that seems like 10% of what happens.

author=iddalai
I see, but from my perspective that seems like 10% of what happens.

Oh no, a lot of chat on IRC or Slack or wherever is just goofy chatter or people losing their minds over something, but once in a while you make friends with another gamedev and maybe one day that relationship blossoms into a beautiful game!

I find Slack incredibly useful for sharing images and files and things, or for starting quick private conversations between a few people. The fact that I already use it for work and such makes it even more convenient (I have 4 slack channels I'm in right now, and I imagine I'll join more when I work on more team-based game projects). IRC isn't terrible but it is a bit cumbersome to learn.

So yay Slack!

author=eplipswich
But more importantly, I just think IRC has pretty much lost its appeal to the general consensus. Heck, hardly anyone in my country uses IRC to communicate, never mind me.

I'll just reference this: http://royal.pingdom.com/2012/04/24/irc-is-dead-long-live-irc/

Very good read! I agree with a lot of its points, especially social networking killing IRC's primary role of empowering quick and accessible socializing and spread of information. Best tool for the job, as the saying goes, and if Twitter and the like prove better for most people then it is what it is.

As for me though, I've never used (and refuse to use) any form of social networking, so I still use IRC as my primary way of getting news about what goes on in the world. I can't stand the noise and general stupidity social networking emits, IRC seems to have a natural way of weeding most of that out.

Freenode having an uncomparable boost in numbers is also understandable, since IRC has always catered to the geek and engineers like I mentioned before. Open source projects are absolutely filled with them, so it's natural that Freenode being home to a lot of channels for such projects would see this increase with the decline or demise of other networks. I'm not really surprised the numbers show this.

author=Mirak

author=NeverSilent
But the few times I've been on the RMN IRC channel more or less recently, there was simply nothing happening there... But staring at a virtual silence just makes me feel extremely awkward, so unfortunately I don't go there very often.

Curiously, this has been my experience with slack the last couple of days. I'm still waiting to have the wonderful experience all of you seem to be having.

Doesn't work for everyone. I just like having people to chat to sometimes. Tab in and out. Probably hurts my productivity, but whatevs. I'd probably just watch a movie otherwise.

Come back
Slack needs dads!

So, reading the arguments against Slack, all I'm getting is "authorization sucks" (and that's an absolutely huge hurdle) and "it does more than is needed" which is... I mean, unless there's some huge cost to that that I'm not seeing, like it's a memory hog or something, that is just not a valid issue. If Slack does more than IRC with no noticeable cost, then Slack is better, period. And that's not even taking into consideration the vastly superior client.

Do Slack's "unfit" features actually cause a problem that I haven't seen explicitly stated here? If not, this is a non-issue.

Now, addressing the "authorization" issue... that's a big one. While it takes a matter of minutes to register, those few minutes plus the need to download a client are likely the reason so few people use it.

Is there not some way to automate this process? Can a bot not automatically verify the people signing up, and then immediately link you to slack's browser client, and the admins trim the fat afterwards? It's not like you're going to see an influx of hundreds of people by doing this.

If that's not possible, I could make an argument in favor of IRC...

The way it's done on RMN is absolutely archaic. There is no good reason why first-time IRC users should have to download a client. If you'd like to use a client, by all means do so. But being expected to download and set up a client in order to chat with people is going to be far too much time and effort for someone with a spur of the moment thought that, hey, chatting might be cool. "Oh, I have to download a client? Eh, forget it then."

The response to that can't be "Well, if that's too much time/work, fuck you then." Because that's the argument against Slack's authorization too.

Why we're not using this...

https://kiwiirc.com/

... or something like it is beyond me. I've used this for RMN IRC before. Incidentally, I stopped idling there because the community was beyond dead.

https://kiwiirc.com/client/irc.snoonet.org/reddit/?nick=YourNickHere

You click the link, you put in your name, you're in chat in a matter of seconds. Is kiwi a perfect client? No. But it'll get people in the community, and that's the goal. Ideally, what I just described is what should happen with Slack with an automated authorization process. If that's not possible, IRC is clearly better, but for only that reason.

My proposal: Change the "chat on IRC" link to either Kiwi or something like it, where you need only to enter your username, encourage those currently idling there to talk, and then make a big event to get people to come to the chatroom.

FIND SOME WAY TO AUTOMATE THIS FOR SLACK IF POSSIBLE AND ABANDON IRC ENTIRELY. If that can't be automated, Slack can never be the main way for RMN users to chat.

Right. Whatever my "automatic authorization" system would require would need to direct people to the browser client automatically.