blog: Modern IRC, a lightweight option still worth considering for your team chat

[Mikaela]

Maybe modern IRC isn't for all teams, but it could lend itself to many use cases or kept in mind on inspiration for other protocols (goal failed: don't mention existence of other protocols in this post more than they have to be and even then in general without names). This will probably be divided in two parts, one on the technical details, another on user experience and third on the shortcomings.

Pieces:

• Ergo IRCd (todo: look at how are InspIRCd and UnrealIRCd coming close behind with the modern features) alongside MariaDB/MySQL.
• Web: Gamja & Kiwi
• Android: look into it
• Desktop: HexChat
• Desktop/CLI: WeeChat?
• iOS: Palaver

It doesn't matter what is used in the end as the experience will be mostly consistent, after first reading history with Gamja or Kiwi (unless before blogging this others implement CHATHISTORY).

Ergo operating scenarios:

• internal, closed for public, maybe with LDAP
• public, with mix of public and private channels
• how private channels work

This is bound to end up duplicating parts of Ergo documentation, but that cannot be avoided.

Other features needing showing:

• amode halfop in connection with invite-only.
• query-cutoff
• history settings for server operator (if I run my own instance, some team shouldn't be running a random instance somewhere)
• RELAYMSG and display names
• burnout emergency help
  • JOIN 0 (which I wish others copied)
  • QUIT (which Slack does right)

Shortcomings and workarounds:

• for a new user, older client will not give history, but ergo provides it for future connections with it (device id), workaround: gamja & kiwi

• no push notifications (TBD), but are they really such important thing outside of working hours instead of honestly being unavailable outside of them?

• message removal or undo send (exists clumsily), but is this not accountability?

• stickers, file uploads, it depends

• ---

Blockers or "on holders"?

• [ ] PirateIRC Charybdis&Atheme --> Ergo migration?
  • would give real-life example of several Pirate organisations including, but not limited to PPFI.
• another IRC network which I am following from the side with curiosity is also doing this
• the push notifications? I am not particularly waiting for them, but then again if they do manage to happen before I type this considering my silence on the blogging front...

[Mikaela]

Lack of federation, threat or possibility? In context of an OSS project, your users will not go to other projects with visible technical association to you. Someone pointing to fake channel on your network? Purge it or don't have channel creation open for non-operators in the first place.

• ref: https://blog.ergaster.org/post/20210610-sovereignty-federated-system-gnome/ (but there is still the goal of not mentioning other solutions! additionally I already blogged about Matrix today)

Confusion on who is actually representative of you in public mode? There are 5 modes which to use as you desire for affiliation or hierarchy, from low to high: \<none>, voice, halfop, op, protected, owner.

[Mikaela]

It looks like this is a serie

1. What can modern IRC do?
   • Some shortcomings are related to this, but possibly not channel management
2. How can I setup modern IRC?
   • Configs and channel management belong here.

Part 1 cannot bring too much technicalities in as it's not of interest and clashes with my earlier Matrix post which avoided server and room management

[Mikaela]

Consistency on second login onwards even for clients without chathistory.

Everything including channel joins happen instantly upon doing it.

There is always a way to do anything on any client, everything has a commandline-like interface and thus doesn't need a specific feature to be implemented

[Mikaela]

The point is text, there are no profile pictures (animated or not), there are no animated emoji, so the focus is on text. What often happens is that modern applications have a lot of blinking animations around which can be an accessibility issue unless there is a way to stop them.

• https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/pause-stop-hide.html

Traditionally IRC has been considered one of the most (screen-reader) accessible platforms in general, but I am not sure I should mention it without performing my own testing.

[Mikaela]

PirateIRC has migrated some time ago and the count of users having issues was about 2 and I was able to help both.

Since the migration, our IRC spam has dropped to 0, now all spam comes from Telegram and Discord. Charybdis-ircd/charybdis#255 was a problem, but not anymore.