[HN Gopher] Isfreenodedeadyet - Tracking Freenode to Libera.Chat...
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Isfreenodedeadyet - Tracking Freenode to Libera.Chat Migration
Author : st_goliath
Score : 186 points
Date : 2021-06-13 20:16 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (isfreenodedeadyet.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (isfreenodedeadyet.com)
| dom96 wrote:
| It looks like it's only a matter of time until we are looking at
| the demise of Private Internet Access (a VPN service owned by the
| person that bought Freenode).
| kadoban wrote:
| For anyone who doesn't know, IRC users have a _lot_ of inertia.
| It's common to stay logged in and idle for weeks/months/years at
| a time. The bandwidth used is negligible, and IRC natively
| doesn't have backlogs unless you're logged in the whole time.
|
| So I'd assume these numbers include tons of people who just have
| no idea anything happened yet.
|
| It also includes people like me who are just signed in to both
| until my last couple of groups switch out.
| kemayo wrote:
| The Libera users count is probably decently representative of
| recently-active people, just because they'd have had to take
| deliberate action to sign in there within the last month.
|
| The Freenode numbers, though...
| pedrocr wrote:
| That can be seen in the volume numbers. Libera seems to
| already have a lot more chat volume even though it still has
| only 2/3 of the users.
| codetrotter wrote:
| I used to have a detached screen with irssi sitting on a
| server for a very long time after I actually had stopped
| checking in on it.
|
| The only reason it's not still running is because eventually
| the server that I had the detached screen sitting on was
| decommissioned.
|
| (Ok, admittedly it was probably rebooted a couple of times
| between that I stopped attaching my screen session and when
| it was decommissioned. But the server used to be up for
| hundreds of days at a time without reboots so the point still
| stands that I "was" on IRC for a long while even after I had
| stopped "being" on IRC. I don't even remember anymore if I
| was connected to freenode or IRCnet or both though.)
| antiterra wrote:
| I connected to freenode as a tourist because of all this stuff
| and left myself logged in. Otherwise I haven't been on for
| years. I doubt I'm the only one who is just there to see what
| happens long-term who will drop off at some point soon.
| hutrdvnj wrote:
| It's kind of funny to think of those users that reconnect to
| their bouncers in a few years from now, see that everyone else
| left the channel and think: "WTF has happened?"
| 2bitencryption wrote:
| I find some dark humor in the fact that someone, somewhere,
| decided to pay a big chunk of cash for Freenode... and now that
| same person must be aware there is a website called
| isfreenodedeadyet.com tracking its inevitable demise, as a direct
| result of their purchase (and subsequent bad acting).
| ddingus wrote:
| It is delicious! Painful too, and unnecessary, but since it has
| happened, why not gawk away?
| rasengan wrote:
| pocket change
| enriquto wrote:
| you caused quite a stir and made a lot of people upset, was
| it worth then?
| obedm wrote:
| Truly magnificent isn't it?
|
| It's also a testament to the beauty of IRC. "we don't like the
| change. So here's a viable alternative".
|
| We could say something similar happened with WhatsApp, but the
| difficulty of moving everyone to another platform is so much
| harder.
| echelon wrote:
| The difference is that
|
| * IRC users have the technical acumen to move.
|
| * IRC users aren't strangers to setting things up and
| configuring them, so the switching cost isn't as big
|
| * There's a shared ethos about IRC, but not so much for an
| app that reaches everybody on the planet. You can convince
| one demographic much easier than all of them.
| luke2m wrote:
| The difference is that
|
| * IRC is interoperable and easy to change servers, unlike
| apps with proprietary protocols. If Yahoo started doing
| horrible things with their email, then people who notice
| would switch to GMail or another host.
| codetrotter wrote:
| On a related note I wonder if many people ended up
| migrating to Discord instead of to another IRC network.
|
| For example the SerenityOS project used to advertise on
| their site that they had a channel on freenode but now
| they link a Discord instead.
|
| http://serenityos.org/
| luke2m wrote:
| That's a good point. Honestly, if I had a popular open
| source project right now, I would have matrix bridged to
| discord and maybe irc if people asked for it.
| whynotkeithberg wrote:
| Don't try to suck off IRC users too hard... The protocol
| and clients have been designed with this in mind. it's not
| like IRC users are so much more intelligent than others...
|
| I feel IRC is better, but it's not because of the average
| intelligence of users & opers
| whynotkeithberg wrote:
| Awww. Fellow IRC users feeling attacked... What?? We're
| not the smartest users of all chat protocols because
| we're using the oldest & most open??? Some people use
| others because its easier & has the most users regardless
| of its safety & privacy & our digital choices don't 100%
| correspond to intelligence?? OMG.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Downvotes on HN are unpredictable at the best of times.
| This, however? Sure-fire way to get them.
| geofft wrote:
| Not just "technical acumen" - the clients are designed to
| connect to multiple networks and treat them equally.
| Literally nothing about my user experience is different now
| that I'm no longer logged into Freenode.
|
| Non-technical users have the same sort of experience e.g.
| switching cell phone providers (provided your area has
| number portability), switching between subreddits, etc.,
| and those moves definitely happen.
| jonas21 wrote:
| People did leave WhatsApp. If you believe Telegram's numbers,
| at least 25M WhatsApp users migrated after the privacy policy
| change. That's more than 1000x as many people as have left
| freenode. But still a drop in the bucket for WhatsApp's user
| base.
|
| It's more of a testament to how niche IRC is that a 20K user
| migration is significant.
| pmontra wrote:
| As a friend of mine wrote in a WhatsApp group that we are
| trying to migrate to Telegram, "which data about me can they
| [WA] steal that I care about." So she's not installing
| Telegram.
| fastball wrote:
| It's not really someone, somewhere: it's rasengan, who is here
| on HN!
| beprogrammed wrote:
| Great site, I was waiting for one of these.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Off topic, but I really love DataDog, I just wish their pricing
| was more transparent.
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| Is this as relevant a comment in this topic as me saying I like
| pizza, or am I missing something?
|
| Btw I used datadog like 5yrs ago when they had a decent free
| plan for one server and I loved it aswell.
|
| Transitioned to frontend dev recently so I have no use it for
| now though.
|
| Edit: okay so the site uses datadog charts, now I get your
| comment.
| Lammy wrote:
| I don't understand how to read some of these graphs, especially
| the Globally Online Users Trend. It says "NOT TO SCALE, PAY
| ATTENTION TO AXES", but the numbers don't even seem to add up.
|
| The Freenode Users line is around ~48k right now according to the
| hover-card and sits at 48k on the graph axis as expected. The
| Libera Users line represents ~31k users according to the hover-
| card but sits at 54k on the axis. I've seen stacked graphs
| before, but 48+31 isn't 54 so I am not sure if that's what it's
| trying to show.
|
| Maybe I need more sleep :(
| kunagi7 wrote:
| The left axis* has the online user count scale of freenode (46k
| - 56k), currently at 48k.
|
| The right axis* has the scale for libera (20k-36k) currently at
| 31.2k.
|
| It's a really confusing graph so maybe another kind of graph
| could represent this data better.
|
| * fixed!
| db48x wrote:
| s/axe/axis/g
| lolinder wrote:
| It doesn't need to be a different kind of graph, it just
| needs to use consistent axes. It's very weird to have the
| left and right labels be different when the units are the
| same.
|
| It'd be one thing if it were two different quantities being
| measured, but we're explicitly meant to be comparing Freenode
| to Libera.chat, so they should really be plotted on the same
| axis.
| Lammy wrote:
| Oh I see. The right axis doesn't render properly and I
| assumed it was just some kind of glyph:
| https://i.imgur.com/t4CeS1u.png
| zzo38computer wrote:
| The picture look like maybe the labels on the right axis
| are rendered with too thick fonts so that they are
| unreadable.
|
| Do you have the raw data from which the graph is produced
| (without JavaScripts or pictures)?
| d23 wrote:
| The graphs are pretty chaotic. Thankfully the headline one
| seems unambiguous and is what one might intuitively want to
| view.
| kaladin_1 wrote:
| Nice visualization...
|
| Please, which tool(s) did you use for the charts?
| kcmastrpc wrote:
| Datadog
| pedrocr wrote:
| https://netsplit.de/networks/top10.php
|
| For a more historical view
| tpxl wrote:
| I like schadenfreude as much as the next guy, but some of these
| graphs are just plain awful. The registered channels for freenode
| shows them plummeting, while the actual difference is about 0.5%.
| lamontcg wrote:
| The ones with the big "NOT TO SCALE / EASILY MISLEADING, PAY
| ATTENTION TO AXES" labels in their titles?
| amanzi wrote:
| That's interesting - I've never seen a Datadog dashboard used
| like this. Quite powerful.
| obnauticus wrote:
| I used to run one of the more populated channels on freenode
| before one of they killed nickserv registration without notifying
| anyone. As a result I lost chanserv access and the oper/freenode
| staff member I contacted "couldn't prove I was the actual owner".
| I think that freenode has suffered from chronic mismanagement for
| years.
|
| I professionally worked with some members in the channel who
| attested to my identity and true ownership of the channel and I
| offered to provide a signed pgp message using my registered email
| to prove that I owned the channel using a domain name that I own
| which matched all of my information (basically a true
| cryptographic proof of identity).
|
| Instead of this, the oper made me announce my intentions to "re-
| take over" the channel to the other members saying that if nobody
| contested then he'd return ownership. I did this for about four
| months every week. Then the oper decided to give owner perms to
| his friend saying that I wasn't active enough to administer the
| channel. After his buddy took over the channel, there have been
| no administrative actions taken (ie no mode changed) because
| there haven't needed to be any? It's almost as if I knew how to
| administer an IRC channel and configured it in a way where it
| didn't need to be touched? Either way it was pretty much a slap
| in the face after spending years growing a community for their
| platform. If anyone is a member of this channel and wants to
| start fresh ##embedded channel somewhere else, happy to do so. I
| hope others do the same.
|
| Looks like the former staff member resigned recently. Good on you
| buddy. But you still have a special place on my no fly list :).
| kowlo wrote:
| Where did the link (https://andmaybegayer.tumblr.com/post/65161
| 2929639284736/jes...) to the former staff member go?
| obnauticus wrote:
| Decided it was best to leave names out.
| makomk wrote:
| If I'm following this all correctly, the former staff member
| who decided to give your channel to their friend is staff for
| the New and Better(tm) replacement to Freenode that all the
| open source projects are being encouraged to move to. You know,
| the one that is obviously so much more trustworthy because all
| the previous Freenode staff are behind it.
| obnauticus wrote:
| Who knows.
| Black101 wrote:
| I'm never going to go on libera.chat... I use IRC networks, but I
| don't even use Freenode.
| chris_wot wrote:
| Good for you?
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| If you never used Freenode, why _would_ you? Libera is just
| good ol ' Freenode minus its old trademark.
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(page generated 2021-06-13 23:01 UTC)