Ah, yes, smaller channels can certainly seem that way and the join leave logs are basically spam.
For what it's worth, I've been active on three channels in the past few months — #openwrt on OFTC, #vim and #neovim on Libera. I've always got responses fairly quickly on #openwrt and #vim.
while elsewhere i asked the same question, this is of course the downside of a large network. on a large network such issues disappear in the noise, and people would have to make a very very good case to have the channel owners dethroned. on a small network such issues can be dealt with easier (although given the reason for leaving, and other comments about irc.perl.org it appears that that place was no better)
though there is still the option of creating a new channel with a different name, and inviting people over...
>Or at least, that was the case at the time I was on Mozilla's IRC server.
That. It can vary with time, mood etc. It's not like there are that many people hanging around at the channel yet, or using the language in general. Heck, it's not even beta or frozen yet!
I don't miss IRC, since I still use it, but I miss certain channels. I swear every linux related channel I go into is full of a bunch of a-holes. 20 years ago I got a lot of help (and I hope provided a lot of assistance myself) in #linux and others, but now it feels like I'm offending a channel when asking for help.
This is exactly what happens on the official Arch Linux IRC channel. The entire process stinks of condescension and probably drives quite a few people away from the channel (including myself).
What I found was that very few people on the distro channels have original knowledge - they just run some bot commands or link to some page they Googled for. If I ask a question that hasn't been answered before, nobody replies. That's why I usually end up going to the upstream channel instead, where they actually know what they're doing and are willing to help, even if that means you have to wait 12+ hours for a reply.
You're mistaken, that's a channel by channel basis not a server by server kind of deal.
Some channels include bots used to create public channel logs, but not all. Creating unauthorized public logs is usually considered against IRC etiquette so many channels go unlogged.
I wouldn't know which channels to hang on on IRC these days. For the past 10 years even populated channels are a ghost town of join and leave notices, and not any discussion.
Interesting... I don't spend any time in IRC Channels. I find them distracting. But it's cool that some people have gotten a job or two out of a Channel.
I remember back in the days of IRC being megapopular, a lot of servers would kick me out because they had too many channels and listing them triggered flood protection :-P
> I enjoy that the barrier to entry with places like IRC are higher because it's directly correlated with the quality of discussion, in my experience at least.
Opposite experience here. Examples: the #archlinux channel on Freenode I had on autojoin for ages but never saw that higher quality discussion there. The #Fedora channel is pretty good but not so much chatting there.
Last I used IRC was over a year ago, so maybe things changed.
> IRC is awesome. The biggest downside is that when you join a channel, you don't get to read all the previous history. In that important feature Twitter/Slack is superior.
I use bip[1], which is an IRC bouncer. I basically connect to networks from a remote machine, and when I hop into IRC, I connect to that machine - which gives me some playback of what's been said beforehand, so I know at least some of the context.
This doesn't solve the 'problem' for joining new channels, but it's nice if you have regular channels you hang out in.
> If you go on IRC now every channel is idle, no chat, just joins quits and parts, boring, dead.
Not my experience at all. The channels I'm in have had a fairly stable number of users for at least the last decade. These are channels with hundreds or even thousands of users. There is lots of discussion in these channels every day. Sometimes so much I can't keep up with it if I'm there participating. I'm in mostly tech related channels, though.
>> Many mature channels have a group of regulars that have been part of the channel for years or decades. Many channels are a bit of a social club. Some channels have regulars that are insufferable.
> Please share some examples.
Not the commenter you asked but the author of the original post here. I don't know about insufferable regulars but some channels like #emacs, #commonlisp, #esolang, etc. on irc.libera.chat do feel like social clubs but in a good sense. The same set of regulars can be seen everyday and people recognise each other by their nicknames. Further, I have found these channels to be very welcoming and kind to new members. Sorry I do not have examples of more "mainstream" channels that are also like social clubs and welcoming to new members. As an Emacser and Lisper myself, these are the channels I come across. But I am sure that "mainstream" channels which are social clubs and nice to new people do exist. Perhaps someone else can share some examples on this thread.
Now about regulars, many mainstream channels like #python, #rust, ##math, etc. have more or less the same set of regular and active members who answer on-topic/technical questions frequently. They don't exactly feel like "social clubs" to me. On the other hand they feel like small, tightly-knit, Q&A forums to me.
For what it's worth, I've been active on three channels in the past few months — #openwrt on OFTC, #vim and #neovim on Libera. I've always got responses fairly quickly on #openwrt and #vim.
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