It seems it’s serious. Lets talk about it here, on this post.
What is your opinion? I think Mozillians as end users of new chat system should participate in process of selection replacement of IRC for Mozilla. However fianlly, Mr Mike Hoye, will decide what to choose?
Do you think newer IRC version, named IRC v3 can help and solve the problem mentioned in that blog post? Look at: https://ircv3.net
Lets list the potential replacements:
Telegram
Telegram is open source but it’s core server side isn’t fully open source
Telegram is blocked by some countries like Iran and Russia and Users f these countries should use VPN,… to use it
Telegram Blocked Public groups with uniqe id for some countries like Iran by check the user’s phone number not ip address. As result members of Persian SUMO team can’t join to http://t.me/mozsumo public group, even by using VPN. However we can join to Telegram Supergroups that haven’t unique short user name like L10n Telegram super group.
2-Discord
Discord desined mainly for gamers, it’s not fully like Slack.
I already made NOVA switch to using Discord because of how much I hate IRC due to how horribly painful it is to use and how terribly outdated the protocol and UX is.
I don’t believe that @mhoye would be making this decision as an individual here.
I’ve seen the bot spam problems of recently in both IRC and Telegram, although I must say it seems to be more prevalent on the later than the former AFAICT.
There was a typo in the link to the Telegram SUMO group, the right one is https://t.me/mozsumo
I’m just hopping that whatever is eventually chosen is something I could connect with as easily or as difficultly as to IRC on my current favorite client https://riot.im/
@alex_mayorga is right that this isn’t a unilateral decision on my part. That said, we have a number of good choices here - I’m going to be posting more about that shortly - and I’m happy to talk here about what we’re trying to accomplish and what success looks like.
I understand the limitations with IRC. But IRC is also an easy to use, easy to implement, open source environment. If push comes to shove you can write a client in a few lines of code or even use telnet to connect to it. What is the urgency to get rid of a proven and stabile protocol and environment? Any other platform - if as open to the public as IRC - will be as difficult to manage as IRC is. It is extremely simply to write bots that require some form of identification - even non IRC methods - to be allowed to join a channel (or be kicked right after joining) . I dare to say there’s not a single environment that is so robust, flexible and battle hardened as IRC when it comes to communications.
Mke writes:
“RC is an ongoing source of abuse and harassment for many of our colleagues.”
(1) Every “open to the public” platform unfortunately has these problems. Bots can be used to effectively police channels.
“…getting connected to this now-obscure forum is an unnecessary technical barrier for anyone finding their way to Mozilla via the web.”
(2) There are plenty of web gateways to IRC. It’s the most simple protocol to implement and the development of a web-client is trivial
“Available interfaces really haven’t kept up with modern expectations …”
See (2)
"… spambots and harassment are endemic to the platform … "
See (1)
“… and in light of that it’s no coincidence that people trying to get in touch with us from inside schools, colleges or corporate networks are finding that often as not IRC traffic isn’t allowed past institutional firewalls at all.”
See (2) - Additionally: There’s nothing that says you can’t have an IRC server on port 443.
All in all I don’t find the reasons for the abandonment of IRC convincing. So - I wonder - are there other reasons to move?
Every “open to the public” platform unfortunately has these problems.
This is, unfortunately, one of the most common arguments against changing; at the very least, conceding that it’s true amounts to surrendering, of giving up on the idea that safety and civility on an open network. I just flat out refuse to believe it’s true.
We need to stop talking about harassment and abuse on the network as though it’s inevitable, and start talking about it as though it’s inexcusable.
I’m not sure what you mean by that. Discord is in real-time. But I don’t think Discord is the way to move forward.
I can’t see that happening. There’d be a lot of resources that would have to be put into that, and I don’t think anyone really has them.
As @mhoye’s post says, IRC hasn’t kept up with the times. It’s ridiculously easy to abuse people on it, and we shouldn’t cannot take the “oh well, boys will be boys” stance. I don’t think that being open and being safe are mutually exclusive, but IRC sure makes it look like they are. We can do better.
While we’re investigating options for semi-anonymous or pseudonymous connections, we will require authentication, because:
The Mozilla Community Participation Guidelines will apply, and they’ll be enforced.
In the Guidelines I did not find rules pertaining to authenticating. Am I missing sth.?