mIRC Home    About    Download    Register    News    Help

Print Thread
#212445 23/05/09 12:01 PM
Joined: May 2009
Posts: 1
A
AngeloD Offline OP
Mostly harmless
OP Offline
Mostly harmless
A
Joined: May 2009
Posts: 1
Hello members of the forum...I am with IRC for almost 15 years, i learned loads of things, it made me feel happy about it. During the time when I started IRC, it was a peak of IRC i guess, channel were very busy with overcrowded chatters. All the years, I have observed, dramatically the number of chatters are become lesser. I can think of one reason why the number of users dropped, i think they mostly flock to a good chatting network with a good features on it. Nowadays, chatting networks offer chatters with video cam which you can see each other and can even use the microphone to talk. Well, i still consider IRC to have a very cool features especially to the computer programmers and scripters but I do not think it is appealing to a normal chatter anymore. I dunno what will become of IRC in the future but I do hope they can upgrade or make a good amount of changes with its features. Therefore, we can use camera or microphone to chat, hence we will win the heart of the majority of the crowd and eventually people will join to IRC AGAIN...Please Save the good IRC.
Does anybody agrees? or is it only me?

Joined: Oct 2003
Posts: 3,918
A
Hoopy frood
Offline
Hoopy frood
A
Joined: Oct 2003
Posts: 3,918
Do we really have to have this conversation again? There's discussions galore on "irc dead" if you do a search. Here's one.

Summary:


EFNet, the network that was probably around when you started IRC, peaked not 15 years ago, not even 10 years ago, but only around 5 years ago. In fact, there are more users on IRC now than there were 10-15 years ago (perhaps combined). So firstly your premise is completely false. We can stop here. Yes, there is a downward trend if you look at the later tail of the graph, but there are so many more users it would take decades before IRC reaches your "peak" years. And guess what, there are still large networks that are growing, here's one:



IRC doesn't need your help. Especially not from features that no longer make it IRC in the first place. You make video a major component of IRC and it won't even be IRC anymore. You should be trying to save IRC because you like text only chat, not because you want to save the letters "I" "R" "C". You don't need to be loyal to a protocol, just a feature set. If you don't like the feature-set then you shouldn't be trying to "save IRC", you should be leaving it to find the features you want-- trust me, webcam chat protocols are out there.


- argv[0] on EFnet #mIRC
- "Life is a pointer to an integer without a cast"
Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 395
T
Pan-dimensional mouse
Offline
Pan-dimensional mouse
T
Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 395
Whilst I appreciate you're effort in the last post, I've never understood why 'features' such as voice/video havn't become part of the DCC features. Perhaps one-day, when ident dies, they will.

Last edited by The_JD; 24/05/09 06:57 AM.

[02:16] * Titanic has quit IRC (Excess Flood)
Joined: Feb 2003
Posts: 3,432
S
Hoopy frood
Offline
Hoopy frood
S
Joined: Feb 2003
Posts: 3,432
You can find addon's that do what you asking for, i have seen "cam for mirc" in a addon, and for voice you can use a stand alone program like teamspeak or some other program out there..


if ($me != tired) { return } | else { echo -a Get a pot of coffee now $+($me,.) }
Joined: Oct 2003
Posts: 3,918
A
Hoopy frood
Offline
Hoopy frood
A
Joined: Oct 2003
Posts: 3,918
Because Khaled isn't a video/audio software developer. While there are libraries to help you with such things, integrating video capabilities isn't exactly trivial. He's also one man, maintaining an IRC client. He already has enough to do maintaining an IRC client and a full scripting language, I don't think this is really high on the list.

I doubt, even when ident dies, people will want video on IRC. Use the right tool for the job-- if you want video chat, use Skype or one of the hundred "video chat" flash applications out there with extremely large communities.

This conversation is really like saying, "I like to read books but I wish there was some way to deal with that annoying 'reading' thing."


- argv[0] on EFnet #mIRC
- "Life is a pointer to an integer without a cast"
Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 395
T
Pan-dimensional mouse
Offline
Pan-dimensional mouse
T
Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 395
I wasn't saying that Khaled was a video/audio dev. I was merely stating that I was surprised it hadn't been added to DCC specs, not mIRC.

You doubt that when Ident dies, that people will want video on IRC? Well, people evidently already do (maybe not everyone, but people do)

How does this conversation relate to reading books? Have you never seen text readers? Braile?

Your train of thought, would have you denying that DCC File Sharing should be possible over IRC. (Glad this isnt a new feature suggestion)

There's no reason an IRC client can't support voice/video, as a hybrid.
Take a look at MSN Messenger for example, Because I have a webcam and mic, does that mean I don't use it text anymore? No, I rarely use video/voice on MSN, but it does come in handy at times.

On a side note: argv0, In every post i've read just now, you've been very argumentative about every suggestion someone makes, take a look for yourself


[02:16] * Titanic has quit IRC (Excess Flood)
Joined: Oct 2003
Posts: 3,918
A
Hoopy frood
Offline
Hoopy frood
A
Joined: Oct 2003
Posts: 3,918
And you shouldn't be surprised about that. Nothing's been added to the DCC spec for about a decade now, and the last changes were minor.

People don't "already have" video via DCC or IRC. There are third party dlls/programs that are used off IRC/DCC, which is virtually equivalent to messaging someone and telling them to call you on your landline (or your Skype). The reality check is that these tools (bytecam is the only one I know of) are really not all that popular. That may be due to a number of reasons, so I'll reserve judgement.

I believe my analogy might have gone over your head (you're probably not an avid reader). Let me try another: adding video on IRC would be like giving a car to a bunch of recreational cyclists. Both might get you from point A to point B, but their reasons for using a bike have little to do with merely getting around- they choose to use their bikes. Contrast this with communication- IRC users choose to use IRC because they want a text-only environment. If they wanted video capabilities they would not have chosen a text-only environment to communicate in. As I've said many times now, there are hundreds of alternatives to IRC they would have chosen if video/audio was important, therefore it's clearly not important to the people continuing to use IRC.

There are hundreds of ways to communicate with others. IRC does one of them really well. It need not do all of them; that is not what would keep the protocol alive as IRC.

And I don't really believe DCC is an important de-facto extension to the IRC protocol. Of the many years I've been on IRC, I've probably personally only transferred a handful of files. This is even less important now than it was in the past, when services like drop.io are ubiquitous and e-mail is far more reliable than it used to be. You'd be right, if confronted with DCC as a new feature today, it would really not be of much use. I'll bet this outlook is true for most users using IRC for it's intended purpose; communicating, not filesharing.

In fact, P2P on IRC is probably the best explanation for the spike in users starting from 2000 and ending around 2004-5. That correlates almost exactly with the rise of MP3 ubiquity (and Napster) until its death and the subsequent birth of protocols that supersede IRC such as BitTorrent. If that is actually true, adding video/audio isn't going to get those users back; they were only here while it was the best protocol they could use to "share" files. The only way to get those people back on IRC would be to make it a better P2P protocol, and I really hope we don't start seriously discussing that.

You could actually say IRC isn't dying at all, merely shedding the users that were using it for features like DCC and then left when they undoubtedly found better alternatives.


- argv[0] on EFnet #mIRC
- "Life is a pointer to an integer without a cast"
Joined: Sep 2005
Posts: 2,881
H
Hoopy frood
Offline
Hoopy frood
H
Joined: Sep 2005
Posts: 2,881
When you have social networking websites like facebook with realtime chat services built into the website itself, picture/video upload services, friend lists, etc etc. Not many people want to carry on using a purely text-based chat service.

Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 395
T
Pan-dimensional mouse
Offline
Pan-dimensional mouse
T
Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 395
Originally Posted By: hixxy
When you have social networking websites like facebook with realtime chat services built into the website itself, picture/video upload services, friend lists, etc etc. Not many people want to carry on using a purely text-based chat service.

+1

I'm not even going to bother debating the point again, I stand firmly that I would use the feature if it was added, as I'm sure many others would.
Services like Mibbit are becoming very popular, to users that have never used IRC before (and people that have).

There's certainly nothing wrong with expanding IRC's capabilities, even if it is using a DCC connection, not many people are terribly happy with early implementations of IRC, so it branched and grew, this is called evolving.
Adding video/voice support to IRC clients, will, if anything, allow IRC to evolve further.


[02:16] * Titanic has quit IRC (Excess Flood)
Joined: Oct 2003
Posts: 3,918
A
Hoopy frood
Offline
Hoopy frood
A
Joined: Oct 2003
Posts: 3,918
Excuse me?

And Twitter has been the fastest growing social network (outpacing facebook and myspace combined) over the last year and a bit because it has vid... oh wait, it only has text, and it only allows 140 characters per message to boot.

Yea, images & video make everything better. I'm totally convinced.


- argv[0] on EFnet #mIRC
- "Life is a pointer to an integer without a cast"
Joined: Sep 2005
Posts: 2,881
H
Hoopy frood
Offline
Hoopy frood
H
Joined: Sep 2005
Posts: 2,881
Myspace is a has-been website now. It's dropped from no. 4 to no. 11 on the alexa.com rankings. Facebook has taken place at no. 4.

I don't doubt that twitter has grown a lot faster than facebook and myspace. Whilst twitter is a purely text based service, there are services that compliment it like twitpic, which allow you to upload pictures and post the link on twitter. There are clients for smartphones that automate this process, such as "twitterfon" on the iPhone, so twitter is easily accessible while people are on the go - call it a portable blogging service if you will. I post on twitter using my phone while I'm on the train, it's so easy.

There are also a lot of celebrities that use twitter. Many people just use it for that reason. Some of my favourite comedians post on twitter every day, it's a good read.

My point is, social networking websites evolve on a regular basis. IRC has been the same since it was first created pretty much. There's little reason for people to carry on using a purely text based service when there are so many other, more fully featured services around today.

According to netsplit.de there were 843,412 users on IRC in its entirety in the last week. Now let's take a look at facebook as a comparison:

Quote:
* More than 200 million active users
* More than 100 million users log on to Facebook at least once each day


Source - facebook's own stats page.

I think it's fairly obvious what the masses prefer wink

Joined: Nov 2006
Posts: 1,559
H
Hoopy frood
Offline
Hoopy frood
H
Joined: Nov 2006
Posts: 1,559
While I'd never estimate mIRCs users to be in the upper millions, you shouldn't take the netsplit.de statistics for the "whole of IRC" (In a related thread, I pointed to the constant diversification of the network landscape and to the lack of interest or even open objection of many mid-size networks to be indexed).
Anyway, for a moment I'd like to put aside argumentats based on quantity only. If mIRC isn't the foremost app for "chat" any more, it shall remain the foremost app for IRC-based chat.

Digital world saw and will see the rise and fall of protocols, and of applications/implementations of these protocols. I don't suppose mIRC to have a tremendous peak again, or to become more popular than the zeitgeisty social networking thingies. But Imho IRC as protocol, and mIRC - as it's foremost client - is neither dead nor "quickly dying". It's alive and will continue to live, for a decent while at least. smile
Some distant day, IRC may be dead. But until that day I'd like mIRC to remain the superb IRC client it is, without attempts to turn it into something it never wanted to be. If some day IRC will be marginalized, mIRC will have become a niche tool - and I'd like mIRC still being mIRC that day.
Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't mind if new protocols were added who complement it's IRC-based capabilities. Yet mIRC should rely on it's own strenghs in the first place. For example DCC had always been subordinate to IRC in mIRC, in both the ammount of work/time Khaled put into developing features related to it and in the popularity of the protocol and features amongst mIRCs users.

Whatever new feature, it cannot compensate for a possibly diminishing interrest of users in IRC as a protocol, as a whole. Ergo mIRC shouldn't try too hard, and it should not lapse into imitations. All asymmetrical dispositions of resources for both advertising and developement put aside. Making mIRC at last a full-unicode app will for example open mIRC to many new languages and users.
And, so far, IRC/mIRC survived many "fashions" and proclaimed "revolutions", outlasted some of those "en vogue" apps and "social network" approaches.

As a final analogy (Yes, another analogy! :D): the success of TV over radio is undisputed. From some valid point of view, many users "migrated" from the one media to the other. And what should radio "have done about it" - it neither caused this shift of users nor missed it an existing chance to prevent it, e.g. by not being open minded for changes within the possibilities of the media. Many contemporaries declared radio to be dead at the end of the decade. But radio didn't die, and TV did not succeed radio as a media. The radio media is still alive, with it's own users, uses and characteristics. And I'm glad it is.

Joined: Sep 2005
Posts: 2,881
H
Hoopy frood
Offline
Hoopy frood
H
Joined: Sep 2005
Posts: 2,881
Don't get me wrong - I wasn't saying that things like facebook will kill IRC entirely, just that I believe social networking websites to be the reason a lot of people are less inclined to use IRC and/or chatrooms these days - hence the drop in users on IRC in recent years.

Joined: Aug 2007
Posts: 72
P
Babel fish
Offline
Babel fish
P
Joined: Aug 2007
Posts: 72
IRC is dying quickly and exponentially... as Horstl said the stats on netsplit.de do not reflect the whole of irc... infact the only reason you seen any incline on those popular servers is because all the small fleets are dying and the escape pods are migrating to the mother-ships... I am an alien... We are controlling transmission... ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US!


mIRC Scripting: So easy a caveman could do it.
Joined: Oct 2003
Posts: 3,918
A
Hoopy frood
Offline
Hoopy frood
A
Joined: Oct 2003
Posts: 3,918
The difference is that IRC is a protocol, not a "social network". You're comparing apples to oranges. Of course centralized companies are going to have more traction than a decentralized protocol-- the proof is in the points about netsplit.de stats reflecting the "whole of IRC" (of course statistically speaking, a few large networks are enough of a sample size to make a relevant judgement about the "whole").

Compare IRC to something it is like. Saying you should add video to IRC is like saying you should add hefty new features to the SMTP protocol. Protocols serve specific purposes, they're not really made to evolve. Evolution in terms of protocols usually means the birth of a completely new protocol (compare Gopher with HTTP). If someone wants video + "IRC", it would be best to implement a new protocol-- that way implementors of the IRC protocol need not be bogged down by implementation details of video support, which they may not care about.

Video could be added to DCC as an optional extension, but adding "optional extensions" to a protocol generally just makes for low adoption rates and bad user experience when having to deal with different clients.


- argv[0] on EFnet #mIRC
- "Life is a pointer to an integer without a cast"
Joined: Oct 2003
Posts: 3,918
A
Hoopy frood
Offline
Hoopy frood
A
Joined: Oct 2003
Posts: 3,918
IRC is not dying exponentially. No data shows this. There is also a multitude of data from searchirc on hundreds of networks, large and small, and the data does not agree with exponential decay. To say that small networks die faster is not surprising-- that has always been a reality of IRC (and virtually any other system). If users from a small network migrate to a larger one, you still have the same number of users even if you have less networks.. that doesn't translate into "IRC is dying".


- argv[0] on EFnet #mIRC
- "Life is a pointer to an integer without a cast"
Joined: Sep 2005
Posts: 2,881
H
Hoopy frood
Offline
Hoopy frood
H
Joined: Sep 2005
Posts: 2,881
I don't see what's wrong with comparing apples to oranges when they're both fruit. Both IRC and facebook are mediums that can be used to communicate with others over the internet.

I agree that protocols aren't necessarily made to evolve, however that is probably the reason most people have moved onto other services that have been updated in the last 10 years. There was a slight attempt at enhancing IRC, called IRCX, but it didn't really add anything that your average "chatter" would care about.

Joined: Aug 2007
Posts: 72
P
Babel fish
Offline
Babel fish
P
Joined: Aug 2007
Posts: 72
I believe IRC is being used in 2 senses in this thread...

1. I.R.C. the ugly ancient caveman era unevolvable protocol.
(Basically the neanderthal's version of the telegraph)

2. IRC as a general term meaning somewhat... Cloud of clusters of partially compatible decentralized unstable social networks.
(Basically a ClusterFuck)

I see no future for either of these...

Since you like analogies...

Using the ClusterFuck social network is like giving a telegram to a bird to deliver, when e-mail exists.

Video and Audio?

Well maybe that bird can carry a DVD or 2... Hell, Storks deliver babies right?


mIRC Scripting: So easy a caveman could do it.
Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 395
T
Pan-dimensional mouse
Offline
Pan-dimensional mouse
T
Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 395
The OP wasn't proposing that it be added to mIRC, and I suggested adding it to DCC, not IRC.

We have DCC specifically to allow for direct connection adoptions such as this, so why not use it?

See: http://www.irchelp.org/irchelp/rfc/dccspec.html

Whilst it dosn't specify video or audio, it's the concept of DCC i'm referring to


[02:16] * Titanic has quit IRC (Excess Flood)

Link Copied to Clipboard