How well would a mIRC Channel do now?

[AJ]

With all ... 4 people. Or maybe there is one, and I'm totally out of the loop, I don't know. Do people still use mIRC? Or is it all Skype now? I just kind of fake around on the internet on a phone, so, can't exactly say I'm totally up to date with what people use to communicate with anymore. (I still use AIM to talk to like two whole people, is that something that is done?)

ANYWAY, so yeah, I mean, I guess everybody is probably scattered in like dying things like #allthecoolkids or #germannamedwarthingthatMightFoxruns I don't even know.  But if not, maybe that would be a thing. A thing to try.


Probably a bad idea though.

[Southbird]

I usually don't do well with IRC, too much attention required.  Instant Messengers are fine, this is fine, I dunno.

[Squishdiboo]

I'm too lazy to actually sit at my computer to do much typing.  If you could participate in a IRC chat over an iPhone and I understood how IRC works (always had somebody help me set it up before) I'd probably give it a shot.

[Sz]

I want to do a board software with the fidelity of IRC, but the persistence of a traditional message board.

But I hate programming when I'm not at work.

[AJ]

There are mIRC clients for both iOS and Android devices, so, either way. I know the one for Android is called AndChat, I don't remember the iPhone one though. But it exists.

[Seph]

Haha, oh yeah, #fallschirmjager. I can't believe I spelled that right. I wonder if Mightfox is even still around.

[Zodberg]

It's not that IRC is outdated. I think it's still the best way to chat.

It's just that I think chatrooms are - whenever I have spare time to use them, nobody interesting is online. Message boards work better since they're more "whenever" .

[Sofox]

Well, checking the #SER link in the banner, someone took down the CGI::IRC page so we can't immediately got the IRC chatroom in the browser from this site. The #SER chatroom is still there on irc.psigenix.net, and before I joined it to check, it did have exactly 4 current members so nice guess AJ!

In terms of online socialisation trends, I've noticed Skype has been up in popularity. Not just for voice conversations (though there's that), but it has these features for text chatrooms where once you've "joined" the chatroom, you can log out, and log back in again and get updated on all the conversation that happened while you were gone. Just remember the "/alertsoff" command so you stop getting annoying signals everytime someone makes a message in the chatroom.

I've also found Steam (of course) great for online socilisiation, I actually met up with an MCer a while back on TF2. We still have a Sonic Eats Rings group on Steam actually: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/soniceatsrings So maybe we should arrange something, since the socialisation aspects of Steam have been improved. If anyone wants an invitation, just ask (with Steam username of course)

Other than that, yeah, there are a plethora of other online socialisation methods, but most of them are more ad-hoc (Twitter, Tumblr) where you pick and choose who you want to talk to and creating groups is a lot harder. The advantage of talking on SER is that I kind know who I'm speaking to. Wheras if I make a Tweet on twitter, I'm not sure if I'm being listened to by Furries or Irish Game Developers or total strangers (the answer most likely being all of the above).

[Southbird]

I want to do a board software with the fidelity of IRC, but the persistence of a traditional message board.

But I hate programming when I'm not at work.

Wouldn't that just be a forum with an auto-refresh?  Or you could glue IRC into database inserts.  In any case, they're not that much different, but I don't think the presentation models work between the two.  It seems to me a forum would make a terrible chat system.

[Shinmera]

I'm on #Stevenchan on irc.tymoon.eu every day, almost all the time from ~9AM-12PM (CEST).
Might be interesting to have a chat with some of you people sometime, I wouldn't mind that being somewhere else either.

I want to do a board software with the fidelity of IRC, but the persistence of a traditional message board.

But I hate programming when I'm not at work.

My imageboard software (and loads of others) has auto-refresh, which I'd say comes about the closest to what you want?
Or at least I'm sure you could also create a theme for it that strips all the unnecessary tags so it looks like a chatroom, but supports complex formatting options, etc.

[Vexiss]

irc on the iphone

but no one would be talking

[Sz]

Wouldn't that just be a forum with an auto-refresh?  Or you could glue IRC into database inserts.  In any case, they're not that much different, but I don't think the presentation models work between the two.  It seems to me a forum would make a terrible chat system.

Well, the megathreads that develop on basically every large message board are basically wannabe chatrooms. It would be nice to unite the two.

An IRC backend with large message sizes and some message board style formatting (links, images, emoticons) would be most of the way there. Apart from the net splits! Also, traditional databases suck for this sort of thing, NoSQL would be the way to go.

My imageboard software (and loads of others) has auto-refresh, which I'd say comes about the closest to what you want?
Or at least I'm sure you could also create a theme for it that strips all the unnecessary tags so it looks like a chatroom, but supports complex formatting options, etc.

Auto-refresh isn't quite good enough, it needs to follow a "push" model for maximum responsiveness. It's not extremely hard to do, just different. Mibbit does it, IIRC.