What is the best way to grow a IRC server reddit / irc ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Time_Horse · 2022-05-23 01:11 I am not trying to become the next [Libera.chat](https://Libera.chat) or anything, but I am looking to grow my irc server a bit more. any tips? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2022-05-23 08:27 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- knifebunny · 2022-05-23 09:43 The biggest problem is that irc is so arciac that if you could use discord instead, why wouldn't you just use discord? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- LameBMX · 2022-05-23 11:10 What are your options if discord were to suddenly die? Can you spin up a server and recreate X time of a channel from logs and have people actually connect to it? IRC is a protocol, not an application. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Time_Horse · 2022-05-23 11:31 discord is a horrible place for me ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Time_Horse · 2022-05-23 11:32 wish I could do it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- knifebunny · 2022-05-23 12:05 Sure, I agree but the ease of use of discord and better functionality is why most people moved to those platforms You don't need to sell me on irc, I used it for a long time and was an administrator on a large network so I understand it well.. But it is very niche, and hard for newcomers to use The question of why is it hard to grow an irc network, when irc networks have been in a slow decline for a very long time.. Well, I'm just providing evidence it's irc that is dying rather than the trend on other platforms, like discord ---------------------------------------------------------------------- LameBMX · 2022-05-23 12:14 Irc is still in heavy use for developers. Only thing that has declined is casual usage and pirating usage. Hell, they even have discord connecting to the support irc channels. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- knifebunny · 2022-05-23 12:15 Developers are very niche aren't they ---------------------------------------------------------------------- LameBMX · 2022-05-23 12:26 That's gotta be sarcasm. But somehow I think it's not. Someone is calling developing niche while they are probably utilizing over a million man hours of development time to call them niche. If a smoker gave you cpr, you would probably complain about their breath. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- knifebunny · 2022-05-23 12:31 Who still uses irc? "developers" OK and who else? I'm sorry but it's true, irc is a niche platform that does not attract new users, and in fact most developers I know use slack Either way, he asked how to grow his network, maybe we should suggest he market it towards developers ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AmarandeGaidin · 2022-05-23 16:10 I used to think Discord was great, but then on reflection not only is it overrated (I really only stay there now because I'm in some servers I have friends in, FWIW, otherwise I'd probably go back to IRC full time, if I didn't just abandon realtime chat altogether) but I actually have to seriously consider if it's heavily responsible for many of the negative trends in hobbies that moved from IRC to Discord, as a side effect largely of its moderation and safety setup. One of the reasons for IRC's endurance surely is that it provides an easy escape valve for if people do not fit in with established communities, or if those communities become unenjoyable (or "toxic" as the modern vernacular would say). You just create a new channel, let the folks you know on the original channel know if you want, and that's that. Time will tell if yours or theirs or both survive and thrive. You cannot really do this with Discord, because their trust and safety policies basically mandate around-the-clock moderation without even a moment's inattention (which means you can't hope to start a new public community without at least 5 or 6 dedicated moderators *right off the bat*, and by dedicated, I mean they have to effectively treat moderation as a formal job where they are on the clock and can't afford even the luxury of mainly partaking of the hobby and poking in on the channel every now and then), unless you're okay with a completely private club that won't really grow much after inception due to a lack of discoverability. Otherwise, eventually you are bound to miss someone (probably a troll) posting something that violates the terms of service, and not only will Trust & Safety ban you and your server, they will ban the account of every member as well. There is no analogue on IRC (because IRC is not a strictly account based format, with the closest it comes to that being NickServ and channels that can require you to have *a* registered nick - but even then, channels that require you to have a specifically membered account are basically nonexistent apart from the ops list on networks with Dalnet/Libera style services). This also encourages moderators to favor a single accepted point of view on the channel topics (by silencing or banning dissenters), because it's one of the few ways they can keep the moderator workload down (since they cannot afford to ignore even a single cry for moderator, and in today's world, people frequently do cry for moderators on discussion platforms when somebody dares to disagree - certainly at least in part in order to take advantage of exactly this pressure). Add to this the fact that IRC leaves concepts like friending and blocking up to the users (in the form of client based notify and ignore lists). Discord meanwhile insists on being a standard social media in this way, with server side friends lists, and moreover, a whitelist based DM authorization system that only lets you be as open as "friends or common server members" - which further impairs the ability of community sectors to move to a new server. Unlike people that have left an IRC channel, people that have left a Discord server often simply cannot contact former members at all, as Clyde will get in the way. Moderators of the incumbent community for a topic can take advantage of this as well (if they kick dissenters quickly, they mostly cannot organize others to form a competing community as their DMs will be blocked for lack of common server). Against this, Discord has ... the ability to post images directly to the channel (I expect the effective death of Photobucket in the past few years has helped Discord out considerably for this reason) and the fact that it works okay on phones (while IRC, for all its virtues, always has and probably always will suck on phones)? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CatfaceMcMeowMeow · 2022-05-23 16:24 The audience for *new* IRC users is unfortunately pretty limited at this point. Most older IRC users already have their favorite servers picked out. Your best bet is to find a niche or two. Are you into a specific aspect of retrocomputing? Maybe start a revival of MS Comic Chat? Is there a CS club at a school you can tap into? Is there an open source project that needs a home? It's hard to get people to just come chat for chat's sake. I've run a small IRC server for 11 years. It focused on a regional 2600 group and the CS club at a local university. As better chat options became more popular, that's dwindled to a subset of nerds that don't want to run Discord for whatever reason, or ones that run weird operating systems without good support for the above. As the core group has gotten older, we've lost connections to that schools CS club, so new members don't come in. People grow up and find things to do besides be on IRC. It's a bummer, but c'est la vie. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- knifebunny · 2022-05-23 16:28 Moderating irc channels and irc networks had its own challenges too, and may be not are so different to what issues there are around discord moderation.. I think you are missing the point though, irc networks used to have to have dedicated help channels because it was so confusing to use for the vast majority. Working out how to get on a network and find other users was difficult, and im sure many tried and gave up due to frustration People slowly moved away from irc because people were tired of over- moderation, because the internet became higher in fidelity and the sharing of photos and videos were more prevalent and irc doesn't support that well, and because a lot of people from that era simply grew up I'm not suggesting discord is the only answer, I'm just using an example of a platform that is extremely popular, is easy to use, and does a lot of the things irc did but in a more modern way You are welcome to share your thoughts about discord and if it's not for you, I understand, but it seems to work for a lot of others and I think anybody being introduced to irc for the first time nowadays would struggle with it even more so than in the 90s I don't know what OPs goals are, but he's trying to sell newspapers when people are buying TV's, metaphorically speaking Edit: fwiw discord uses push style notifications, whereas irc requires a constant connection (Ping? Pong!) and that's why it's shit on mobilr ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AmarandeGaidin · 2022-05-23 17:14 Putting Discord's biggest problem in a smaller nutshell: Say a troll comes into chat and links something illegal/unconscionable (like CSAM or massacre videos). On IRC, that person will be banned from the channel (if they did not immediately leave anyway, as most such trolls tended to be bots that would try to hit the entire network with such things). If the IRC Operators catch them, they will be personally AKilled/GLined. And that will be the end of it and life goes on. If IRC ran like Discord, not only would the troll be banned and G-lined, but the channel would be juped and everyone in the channel at the time would be G-lined as well, regardless of whether or not they had also committed violations. See the problem? At that point, you almost can't afford to *join* a channel that isn't being moderated half to death, because you're risking your entire access to the platform every time you do. (And with the server side account based system and the whitelist based DMing, that also comes with all of those users being forcibly uprooted from what is - with Meta properties going out of fashion - often their entire Internet social presence and contact web ...) Discord actively defends this stance too, like it's somehow a positive thing, even though it clearly sides with trolls rather than legitimate users ... Upshot is that Discord results in the mainstream hiveminds for hobbies getting their way in a way that almost forces you to choose hobbies/games based on a) am I okay with this being solely a solitary pursuit and b) what is the *mainstream* community like for this hobby/game, because I'm not likely to find a chill niche community before the mainstream one drives me up the wall (since the chill niche communities are essentially forced to remain hidden for dear life). It's doubtless a huge and possibly even the biggest reason why there seems to have been such a huge uptick in toxicity in recent years. IRC might have its warts, but I'm not really seeing a good alternative at this point to Discord's suffocatingly Draconian mindset other than reverting to the tried and true. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2022-05-23 18:21 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dMenche · 2022-05-23 19:16 I vastly prefer IRC to discord. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SouthernIcelion · 2022-05-23 21:11 Always interested in joining new places, send me a pm where to join :) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- hazeyez · 2022-05-24 20:51 Spam ads with bots on other servers to join yours, with on-join scripts, etc. Nobody is going to join your server en masse unless you have some good people chatting amd topics on there. As big as Libera is, no one really even talks. I see more action on Dalnet and it's a fraction of the size. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Time_Horse · 2022-05-24 20:56 I would rather not spam :/ b/c all that does is attract the wrong kind of users ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CatfaceMcMeowMeow · 2022-05-25 14:27 This is shitty advice, you're just going to piss off other networks ---------------------------------------------------------------------- hazeyez · 2022-05-25 15:30 I know, thanks ---------------------------------------------------------------------- hazeyez · 2022-05-25 15:33 Then you're not going to attract irc users. No one new is coming to irc, only existing users and to even get them to join a new server - one that is brand new without anything going on and no users to interact with at the beginning. Usually new servers are centered around some other service or community and they go to am irc server to interact with that community. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Hexick_ · 2022-05-29 15:27 If you wanna shoot me a PM with the server hostname, I'll be willing to connect and hang around for awhile and see if I like the joint. Always looking for new servers to chat on. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sorcerer420 · 2022-06-03 17:45 So what I've done... Submit your IRC server/network to sites like [www](https://wwwircdriven.com).ircdriven.com and [www.netsplit.de](https://www.netsplit.de) I've also pylinked a few channels to certain networks. Make a website, then make an auto connecting webchat, i made like #linux, pylinked it to multiple networks and made a webchat link that connects directly to my server and to #linux and other webchat links to various other channels that may be interesting enough to draw people in. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sorcerer420 · 2022-06-03 17:46 BTW, I run IRC-nERDs ([irc.irc-nerds.net](https://irc.irc-nerds.net)), #nerds ... If you wanted to come there and see how I have things pylinked and what kinda stuff I'm running. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Time_Horse · 2022-06-03 18:30 I have been there before lol, you are pylinked to CT's network? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- platzbo · 2022-06-05 15:07 Throwing out an idea, you can integrate an IRC room from your server as part of a site, and people could use it to chat about thing relating to what's going on in the site. Something similar to sync tube or an addon to a self hosted streamed video. Just throwing out ideas. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Sm0ttyy · 2022-06-11 08:52 massacre videos are illegal how come I am not arrested ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AmarandeGaidin · 2022-06-11 16:23 Whoosh, the point is that they're something you can be banned from a platform for. IRC won't G-line you from the network because somebody else posted something in a channel you were in, and *certainly* not a channel you're not even an Op in. Discord will ban you from their entire platform over a similar mishap (and what's worse, since you don't normally "quit" on Discord the way you usually do on IRC when you log for the night, you're considered responsible for being there for everything that happens when you're at work or sleep, too ...). So on IRC, you could be more laid back about moderation and more free to spin up a new community if the current ones were not suitable. On Discord, this policy paralyzes such natural evolution to the point that you have entire (based on forum complaints anyways) community- sized cohorts of people that may not be able to form their own community because they aren't tightly organized enough to meet the standards of moderation perfection. *This is not a good evolution. IRC was better.* ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Sm0ttyy · 2022-06-11 18:31 ok ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Time_Horse · 2022-06-13 03:21 Thank you, I like that idea a lot! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- platzbo · 2022-06-13 04:27 Good luck with that. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lazy-xo · 2022-06-18 13:12 Send a pm I’ll join - lol looks like you’ve found the way - letting people know about it ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lazy-xo · 2022-06-18 13:16 Spam ads with bots lol - this dude’s the type you want on your server pm me @hazeyez i wanna hang.. seriously ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sorcerer420 · 2022-06-19 16:21 indeed ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ComputerTech312 · 2022-06-24 16:35 Honestly, i'd recommend just being chatty on other networks, making friends, then inviting them and as sorcerer said on this subreddit, applying to IRCdriven and [netsplit.de](https://netsplit.de) is a good way of attracting users as well(I've seen improvment to TechNet since IRCdriven started up again). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- anonymous_4206900 · 2022-07-29 09:19 I'll join if you PM me as well. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- BrothasOnline · 2022-12-20 06:04 What's your IRCD? Maybe link w/ other smaller servers who have a similar interest? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- RonDiaz · 2023-01-03 20:12 PM me server please ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Lopsided-Ad7396 · 2023-11-14 13:56 Stumbled on this reddit while googling existing server names so as not to step in the same river twice. We started our own network this year. Ironically, it's about all things retro and I personally felt like reviving MS Comic Chat there. We are also seeking out smaller networks to "assimilate" them to do everyone a favor. I mean, it seems there are more new networks around than users on each of those. Too bad pretty much all borgnet domains are taken, else we would've probably taken it ;) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Lopsided-Ad7396 · 2023-11-14 13:57 [irc.retronode.org](https://irc.retronode.org). Taking liberties here, hehe... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Lopsided-Ad7396 · 2023-11-14 13:57 Welcome to [irc.retronode.org](https://irc.retronode.org). Sorry, not my thread, just taking liberties :) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Lopsided-Ad7396 · 2023-11-14 13:59 Spamming is the last thing you wanna do. You need some useful side- projects, otherwise it's going to be another stale and quiet place. I mean at the end of the day, what makes your place so special? Nothing. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Lopsided-Ad7396 · 2023-11-14 14:01 [irc.retronode.org](https://irc.retronode.org). Sorry, I'm not the post author, just a random passerby but the network is mighty real, we started it this year and like to think it's going to be somewhat successful. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Lopsided-Ad7396 · 2023-11-14 14:04 [irc.retronode.org](https://irc.retronode.org) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Lopsided-Ad7396 · 2023-11-14 14:06 It's not just about being chatty, you gotta have common interests, projects, etc, so that together you could form a community dedicated to a particular subject. This is how our network came around and you are there too ;)