Andy, I would love a IRC tab for BetaArchive, that would be awesome.

I'd be on it daily

Haven't you just described the vast majority of technologies that power the internet?

Sure, IRC is crude, but then so is the entire email system really. They're not updated frequently as you claim - most "progress" comes from vendor extensions becoming widely used enough to be adopted by others or miserable hacks that no-one would really chose to use, but have to anyway just to get some basic functionality - attempts to combat spam is a big area to thank for the latter.

And then you get onto "web technologies", and while I'll concede HTML5 is finally making some progress (semantic web ftfw), Javascript, PHP, MySQL, etc are all wrecks that somehow keep on going. No-one, if they were designing a language today, would design javascript. As it happens, no-one did design javascript. Just one guy after another kept cobbling bits on that sort of worked. By comparison, IRC is a clean-cut protocol that's almost the same between all major servers and clients.

Anyway, rant over

Edit:

Just thought I should add FTP isn't much to shout about either. Pretty much the only "progress" it's seen in 20 years is some guys thought "HUMM, LETS PUT THIS OVER SSL". Real groundbreaker, that.

I totally agree with hounsell here.

I'd definitely go to BA's IRC channel, if one were to be made.

Me too. I love IRC. It's great. It's simple in a good way, not too much stuff, and not way too basic.

Just would like to point out that the proof that there's an interest in an IRC chat is in #nttalk - we wouldn't have any users if there wasn't, given more than 75% of our users come from BA!
But like DeFacto yet, may be a bit redundant given the need is already being filled? Would always be good to have an "official" alternative however.

Unfortunately #nttalk also proves other stuff, like the need for decent moderation. At its present status it can't be representative to BA due some of the clientel that frequent the channel and some of the stuff said by this clientel. Which is why we don't promote the channel here. Andy and I sure don't have time to sit around and moderate an active IRC channel, and there are not many others on BA that has shown the skills or willingness to keep an IRC channel clean and proper. And we can't have an "official" IRC channel unmoderated since whatever said there could be interpreted as official by BA. We already tried this before and the result was quite bad with flamings, impersonations and other improper actions done by some members and non-members.

So no, I can't say that the need is filled since we don't have an official channel where we can promise that the contents will be mature and proper. But we also don't have the means for managing such channel.

Well, #nttalk was never and has never been intended as an official representation of BetaArchive or promoted by it, so fair enough. Everybody has their own opinion on what's done right and what's not, and if ours doesn't agree then that's perfectly fine.

I'd imagine that the need for such moderation would be very similar in an IRC channel as well as a web based chat,but again if you don't have the means to do either it's totally understandable.

We could even set up an IRC server instead of hosting it elsewhere (e.g. EsperNet, GeekShed, etc.)

That was done before, and barely anyone used the BA official server.

IRC is nice, IMO, but moderation is always an issue. Hate to have abusers spamming up everything. nttalk is fine, not necessarily connected to BA, but a fine chat room. I would suggest just linking to it instead of making another techie channel.

IRC would be nice, but Andy insists the server had to be in-house (i.e. not hosted on EFnet or elsewhere), the fact it was a small in-house server was a problem (resources/security), when it did exist twice user activity grew and then disappearated, and moderation was always an issue.

It's not happening again. And I'm not moderating it. Hell I rarely appear these days due to my committments.



No standard, so why is there an RFC http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1459.txt
IRC's not a perfect technology, the servers available are vastly different, but saying that text chat is outdated (which is pretty much what you're saying).... well...
Anyway, that's opinion for you. You agree, you disagree.

Though saying that, I've seen the webchat, looking good.

There is the RCF, but sticking to it won't ensure you'll be hassle free. Made a bot to connect to servers. It would work on some, but not others. An in house solution would be nice, as it would allow your account to be linked to the logs. Hence easier moderation and no needless swinging of banhammers.

OK let me correct that - there are standards but none of them appear to stick to them properly from my experience.

It's just a bad protocol by today's standards. There's a tonne of improvements that can be made and features that can be built in that weren't thought of when it was made.