Idiot thinks you should use IRC instead of Slack
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Even if it's non-technical staff, like someone from sales or marketing or HR, I'd still expect them to have the ability to follow simple directions
Thanks, I needed that.
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In the browser, my most common symptom is suddenly, Gitter thinks it's Skype and starts putting new posts halfway up the stream in a random order. Meanwhile, every few minutes Racepro is saying "Sorry, app crashed, brb" over another communication channel. It's pretty much chaos. We've moved our real conversations back to Slack, using Gitter only for a tech support sort of open line.
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Huh. I'll have to watch out for that.
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Is Slack any simpler than that?
Yup.
How Slack Onboards New Users | User Onboarding
Simply put, if Slack's first-run experience was an Olympic medal, it would be gold. The level of detail, personality, and ingenuity is basically without parallel. Take notes on this one!
Note that the equivalent of this walkthrough isn't the box you posted, it's going through that, then understanding that to make a new channel you just join one that doesn't exist (a weird concept), then registering that channel with chanserv, then figuring out how to set up the privacy so only your coworkers can join, and also, registering your nick with nickserv. Or, more equivilent, setting up a private IRC server altogether.
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Slightly off-topic: That website really screws up if you don't have JavaScript enabled.
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If you think that, say, mIRC is somehow esoteric you lack basic computer skills.
None of that follows. IRC is esoteric. It's mainly used by older members of the IT community, maybe. I haven't used IRC in at least 10 years in favour of Slack, Skype, Facebook, Hangouts, and even the dreaded MSN Messenger. I don't even remember when I last heard someone mention the acronym (although I've read it a few times because internet).
Even assuming you mean that IT professionals should know about it, you're still ignoring the younger IT professionals, who have had the listed technologies available to them.
I wonder how you get up and function in the morning with an IQ as low and critical thinking/reasoning skills as poor as yours.
Now you're just being mean. I think you've gone off on a tangent.
easy to understand and use
This got me thinking about why it might be perceived this way. I don't remember much about IRC. I think I was just told which channel to go to when I first used it. I used it through mIRC and occasional online clients (probable applets). I wonder if slack is perceived easier because it provides a list of channels, while I don't remember IRC having one.
By our standards, the average technical ability is ridiculously low. There's a difference between a lack of knowledge in symbolic meaning and a lack of thought. It's not always easy to tell the difference.
I think the real problem is that this person is campaigning against Slack just because he doesn't like it, but he's being forced to use it because other people use it.
It occurred to me that I felt the same way some years ago when recruiters would send me .doc, .docm, .docx, .docz, .doclolz, etc files and my version of word would always say 'buy a license'. The problem was not with people sending me those files, but the circumstances which resulted in my not having Office.
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I don't remember IRC having one.
Some clients can pop up a "Here's a list of rooms to join" window, but on any good sized network there's hundreds of them. Good luck finding the one you wanted. The nice thing about Slack's model in this area is that it encapsulates a list of related rooms together, giving you the rooms your coworkers are in rather than every room in existence. It's essentially a private server.
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Since IRC is a text-based protocol you could literally use telnet.
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Also TR
is not using UC software, like Lync/SfB, for intra-office communication. 
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Oh yeah, that's the other thing: You can use IRC clients to connect to slack, which means it might well be built on top of the fucking IRC protocol. It just does it a million times better than any client I've ever seen before.
If it isn't literally powered by IRC, it could have been.
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IRC is a really simple protocol so most chat clients throw in support for it along with XMPP/Jabber, etc. If it was built on something open-source (inb4 blakey
) then it likely just kept the IRC code that was in it.
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Oh yeah, that's the other thing: You can use Jabber clients to connect to slack, which means it might well be built on top of the fucking XMPP. It just does it a million times better than any client I've ever seen before.
If it isn't literally powered by XMPP, it could have been.
Also'd that for you.
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Bots that register nicks, run by server admins, have only been a thing for 20 years.
ah, but as you know, all bots are evil and must be destroyed.
a certain rat told me so
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'dTFY
Ran into YADPB while posting this originally, so off to
I go!
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Fair! The point is, the protocol underneath the software doesn't matter one bit for usability. Making people interact with the protocol directly via commands that have to be memorized is shit for usability no matter what the protocol is. Sure, people can probably remember "To join a channel, type /join". Eventually, they'll memorize the convention that channels start with # (Why? No semantic reason there, just a signifier). They may even remember that "/msg" is short for "send a message to". But "To keep anyone from stealing my identity, type
/msg nickserv register... fuck, what was the parameter order. Type/msg nickserv help register, read the docs, and do that." Literally, I've been using IRC daily for over ten years and I can't remember that shit. The first thing I automate or look for in the settings is a "auto-identify" command so I don't have to ever sign in again.
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That's bullshit, IRC doesn't even have authentication or accounts. Don't bullshit me, bro.
By itself, no, but all IRC servers run IRC services, and all IRC Services offer NickServ, which can not only locally store securely hashed passwords (on WTFNet we use 8-round bcrypt! Woah!!) but can also store them in SQL databases, LDAP, etc...so you could even have an IRC account created and auto-registered through AD. Impossibru!!!!11
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I didn't know that.
The same command that you use to talk in a channel is a PM command if you feed it just a username. You can also do DCC chat where it doesn't even go over the server.
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/ns REGISTER password email
or if the network is old as fuck
/msg nickserv REGISTER password emailEasy enough for me to memorize. How frequently do you join a completely new network?
99% of clients will handle this for you anyway.
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Or put in a more pithy way: yes I can figure out IRC. Why should I have to?
What's there to figure out? Set up an account on the server. Point your client at the server. Go to the channel you want to talk. Start
talkingtyping.It may not have fancy file sharing or whatever...but it's pretty simple IME.
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It may not have fancy file sharing or whatever
Ehhh.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Client-to-Client#DCC_SEND
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He specifically tells you it isn't about him using the IRC environment. He claims it has a shitty usability.
Yeah, but he specifically sounds like he's never used it.
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/ns REGISTER password email or if the network is old as fuck/msg nickserv REGISTER password email
Easy enough for me to memorize. How frequently do you join a completely new network?
99% of clients will handle this for you anyway.
The point is, I don't want to remember that shit. Slack / HipChat uses the same log in system that every other system in the world uses - and that means the usability is better.
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99% of clients will handle this for you anyway.
I've never used one that does, and I've used a handful over the years. Pics or it didn't happen.
Now, sending your password when you log in, THAT clients tend to do. But the registration? Nope.
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The point is, I don't want to remember that shit. Slack / HipChat uses the same log in system that every other system in the world uses
You don't have to, many clients will handle that gracefully. Also, what's this "login system that everything ever uses"?
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Oh right, I forgot who I was talking to. Muting.
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You people get way too pissed over trivial things like IRC clients and trivial people like me.
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Pissed? No. It's just not worth my time because you'll never understand what I'm trying to say.
I have used IRC daily for 10 years. I've written bots against it in multiple languages. I understand how the protocol works. I'm telling you, it's not friendly for newbies. I've introduced dozens of people to it, helped them through their initial setup struggles. But assholes like you just assume that if someone complains about usability, their wetware is the problem.
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Okay, sure, maybe IRC for enterprise is weird, but it could be figured to register nicks based off of LDAP or an SQL database and everyone would be happy-hunky-dory. If you have to do
REGISTERthen yeah that's a pain but it's not all that bad and I'm sure most people will be able to figure it out. Like I said, TRWTF is not using some good UC software like Lync. If you're a small shop that can't afford it, then you can probably deal with the pains of free IRC. But none of this makes IRC a bad protocol, just how taking a tractor to a drag strip doesn't make the tractor a bad design. It wasn't designed for that.
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Easy enough for me to memorize.
Filed under "Easy enough to read for me" with regards to 500-line code files.
I emphatically don't care if you can memorise things easily enough. Good for you. If you're going to assert that the rest of us should be able to as well (and I really hope you aren't) please accept this free one-way ticket to the exothermic underworld.
If you're saying you happen to have memorised it so you reckon other people might do the same, perhaps due to frequency of use...
How frequently do you join a completely new network?
... ok, maybe some other reason, then that's fine.
The same conclusion is drawn: cheat sheets, a menu, something to start from. Here's your prompt, type 'help' if you're not sure.
99% of clients will handle this for you anyway.
Probably for the best. At least it's easy to see how to hook a GUI up to this.
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Why does everyone keep ignoring the fact that you can literally have enterprise SSO for IRC?
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Because you refuse to accept that your experience and viewpoint are not the norm.
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Oh, and not only that, you can also configure both the client or the server to autojoin users or groups of users to certain channels. So all they have to worry about is talking. Just because IRC hasn't been set up for maximum usability in your experience doesn't mean that it couldn't be.
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Except for the fact that you people are literally sticking your fingers in your ears and going "LAlAlALALALA" While I say your experience was done incorrectly? Just because someone at your company didn't take the time to tailor a non-enterprise chat solution into one that wasn't painful for luddites doesn't mean that it couldn't have been done.
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none of this makes IRC a bad protocol
Nobody's saying it is. What we're saying is that the ecosystem that's grown up around IRC, mostly fueled by attitudes like yours, is terrible.
Did you ever have to use shit like IRCle? I used that shit for years, because it was all I could get on mac. mIRC was lightyears ahead of that in terms of usability once I got a Windows laptop. But progress seemed to stall out at "pretty menus to get in, type commands once you're there".
IRCle:
That piece of shit had ONE textbox to enter fields for all rooms. It was floating, detached from the rooms. If you arranged your desktop so you could see multiple rooms at once (each of them was also floating), you'd very easily post to the wrong one. It was dogshit.
mIRC:
I loved the fact that there was a scripts editor hidden deep in a menu where you could do things like customize your cutscript. For years (YEARS!), it didn't ship with a cutscript at all. Here's your new user onboarding experience:
This was fucking genius when it first debuted:
But this is cryptic bullshit for a newbie, no matter how powerful it is:
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you people are literally sticking your fingers in your ears and going "LAlAlALALALA"
Irony.
You want to prove this is super usable, show examples. Make a case. Jesus, you sound like
. "It's not my fault you didn't configure IRC according to my brilliant ideas!"
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you people
So you're better than us now? Y'know what? Fuck you and your superiority complex.Enjoy your ivory tower, you worthless shitstain.
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Nobody's saying it is.
Well, you know, except for Blakey.
attitudes like yours
I love it when you try to insult me. I'm a dick, okay? I get it.
Did you ever have to use shit like IRCle? I used that shit for years, because it was all I could get on mac
Mac in enterprise is
That piece of shit had ONE textbox to enter fields for all rooms. It was floating, detached from the rooms. If you arranged your desktop so you could see multiple rooms at once (each of them was also floating), you'd very easily post to the wrong one. It was dogshit.
Sounds like it, but that doesn't mean it had to be that way because of some inherent flaw(s) in the IRC protocol.
But this is cryptic bullshit for a newbie, no matter how powerful it is:
You're right, I've said that before. But they didn't have to interact with that at all if it had been set up properly.
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That makes no sense. I'm referring to the 3 people that have been insulting/arguing with me in this thread, since blakey probably has me muted. Where did I say I was somehow better than you? Enjoy your victim complex, you angry fuck.
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So you're better than us now? Y'know what? Fuck you and your superiority complex.
:WTF: is going on in here?
/kick
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This is the client I use now. It's called Konversation. I use it on Windows, using a KDE for Windows port, because I like it so much and I hate change :) That said, it's also dogshit compared to Slack.
See the tabs along the bottom? I know people that swear by their tree view, but for me, horizontal real estate is at much more of a premium, so I prefer tabs along the top or bottom.
I literally can only find two clients that let me set it up this way: mIRC and Konversation.
Konversation has a nifty feature where it colors people's nicks differently so it's easier to see at a glance who said what. Which is awesome. You can also customize the icons it uses and so on. No smilies built in, no helpful setup guides, the onboarding experience is crap, but I like it for those reasons.
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You want to prove this is super usable, show examples. Make a case.
I literally have. Since apparently reading my posts in their entirety is a
to 
ing, I'll go and break out teh gogolez.LDAP auth with IRC: http://askubuntu.com/questions/399195/how-do-i-setup-a-ldap-backed-irc-server
A server admin could register nicks during the onboarding process.
As for autojoin, that can be set up client- or server-side. Client side configs can be copied, deployed with the chat client installer, Group Policy'd,..server configs would be more complex, but if you're going to use LDAP, I bet you could configure something like (pseduocode):
if($user.Groups -contains "IT") { join "#ITPeople" }
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See the tabs along the bottom? I know people that swear by their tree view, but for me, horizontal real estate is at much more of a premium, so I prefer tabs along the top or bottom.
Aarrrgh! I hate that IDEs and text editors tend to force you into that bullshit pattern (
kate) . You are a terrible person for liking it!No, but seriously, I'm exactly the opposite regarding horizontal / vertical real estate. Especially when you have lots of files open so they can't all be displayed across the top. I can get a lot more in a list / tree down the left side of the window! Obviously that's not the same thing as an IRC client, but it's an anti-usability pattern for me.
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Sure, but you're still stuck with a shitty interface in your client, and shitty commands to do anything. What you're basically saying is you can remove the need for people to ever interact with the IRC protocol, which makes the IRC protocol usable. Which is
in and of itself before you started insulting people's memorization skills or ability to configure networks.
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I'm exactly the opposite regarding horizontal / vertical real estate.
You and probably the bulk of software developers, given everything I can find is set up that way. I hate it! I have long channel names like
#crossings_pathfinder, and all I see on a sidebar is#crossings_over and over until I scroll (Scroll!) the side panel to see the rest of the names. It's awful. Slack forces it too, but I don't have as long channel names over there.
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Sure, but you're still stuck with a shitty interface in your client,
I use HexChat for Windows. Is this really so unusable?
shitty commands to do anything
Which the client abstracts away, except for maybe
/join(unless you use the UI for/list, which is nice), and I'm sure that's not really that hard to train users on.What you're basically saying is you can remove the need for people to ever interact with the IRC protocol, which makes the IRC protocol usable.
Yeah, so HTTP is TRWTF too? Keep in mind this was created in the late 80s. I'm going for maximum usability, which I assume involves no textual commands. That's not really
-y, is it?Which is
in and of itself before you started insulting people's memorization skills or ability to configure networks.Uh, yeah, the IT people should know how to configure it so that even their least technically literate counterparts have to worry as little as possible about interacting with the protocol. Yes, I am insulting incompetent server admins for not setting things up to be easily usable by the user because the server admins don't know how to set up a server properly. Sue me, I guess?
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Oh, other things that are nice to have that konversation doesn't support include the ability to tile my windows so I can see more than one channel at once. I generally can only do two at once, but when you have an OOC room/IC room setup, that's super useful.
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so HTTP is TRWTF too?
If I had to craft my get commands by hand to read a webpage, it would be. Typing URLs is pretty shit too, but thankfully we have google these days, so if you forget the URL you can find the page anyway. Chrome's ability to search from the address bar is the best we've got: I want to go to Walmart, so I type "Walmart" in the top bar, and Chrome offers me Walmart's webpage as the top result in my google search.
I join freenode and I want to find a place to roleplay. Good fucking luck? I have to know about it in advance.
A Slack-like UX would be, I open the client, and I get a wizard: "Hi! Let's get started. Which network are you joining? Here's a list, or type your own." So you pick a network. Then you're asked, "Who are you", and you give a nick. If it's not already registered with nickserv, the client registers it with a randomly-generated password, and sets it to ID every time you sign in, so you never have to worry about that either. Then it asks if you have a room you want to join, or maybe a thing you want to chat about. So I say something like, I want help with KDE. So it says "Here's some rooms talking about KDE". Oh, wait, this is the part where the protocol doesn't really support what we're trying to do: connect people with people who are talking about something they want to talk about. You have to already know where you're going. There's no google for IRC.
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A Slack-like UX would be, I open the client, and I get a wizard: "Hi! Let's get started. Which network are you joining? Here's a list, or type your own." So you pick a network. Then you're asked, "Who are you", and you give a nick. If it's not already registered with nickserv, the client registers it with a randomly-generated password, and sets it to ID every time you sign in, so you never have to worry about that either. Then it asks if you have a room you want to join, or maybe a thing you want to chat about. So I say something like, I want help with KDE. So it says "Here's some rooms talking about KDE". Oh, wait, this is the part where the protocol doesn't really support what we're trying to do: connect people with people who are talking about something they want to talk about. You have to already know where you're going. There's no google for IRC.
IRC literally does all of this. My HexChat client can do all of this, but it's a little more arcane. mIRC can do it all. And if everything is preconfigured by the server admins, then all of this becomes literally a non-issue. You open the client for the first time. Your nickname is automatically set to "JohnSmith." You are automatically joined to #corporate, #Marketing, and #Spring2016Marketing. Uh, that's...usable?
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Now you're just lying.
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Editing to remove some of the lies helps, but you're still lying.
