I don't know what the organizations' issues were, but when I use IRC, I'm typically idle in several rooms and only rarely post anything. That doesn't mean I'm not reading the contents regularly. But it does mean that the bridge would terminate your session and you'd have to go through the whole process of connecting to the desired rooms from scratch.
I found this burdensome and incompatible with the way IRC is used, so I decided some time back that I wasn't going to use Matrix as an IRC bouncer any more. (Which also means that most of my use of Matrix has ended. I'm in several rooms where there were less than 10 posts total so far in 2023, and now I find myself not checking regularly ... and naturally notifications are turned off.)
@clacke Yes. That isn't only true of #Discord, by the way. I used to see projects nearly devoid of documentation, but they'd push you to #IRC. And same for #Matrix or #XMPP MUCs.
I use IRC, but if I need info (a config setting, the setup process, etc) some questions recur and should be documented so they don't clog up the channel. Others occur so rarely that only one or two people know a fix. Those especially need to go into the documentation. Not just because of "truck factor", but because even those people can forget if there is a long enough time between the question recurring.
lnxw48a1 (lnxw48a1@nu.federati.net)'s status on Friday, 13-Jan-2023 16:00:08 EST
lnxw48a1My use of #Matrix has really plummeted. After the last time that it wiped my bridged #IRC rooms, I decided that it isn't worth the hassle of re-adding them every 30-60 days. So now, have a few Matrix rooms (most of which are completely inactive) and one #Gitter room (bridged, I think, though the plan is for Gitter to speak the Matrix protocol soon).
I left the #Python space and the rooms it contains because one of the admins / moderators was abusive toward a room member.
I don't recall there being a search feature, but even if there were, posts don't get their own addressable URIs, so it isn't possible to link that answer as a reference in a public Q&A/FAQ.
So it has almost all the negatives of #IRC, but with a central corporate operator that is incentivized to block external solutions to those negatives. At least with IRC, there are externally operated bouncers and loggers that help solve many of its issues.
@aab Good to see that @gijs is getting connected. I used to add people I had seen in the #IRC channel (and the connected #XMPP MUC) as contacts, to help extend the network. I should probably get back to that.
(It helps if I spell people's usernames correctly.)
@aab Good to see that @gis@post.hillenius.net is getting connected. I used to add people I had seen in the #IRC channel (and the connected #XMPP MUC) as contacts, to help extend the network. I should probably get back to that.
A #VPN provider that I used shut down without much notice (in fact, the only way I found out was that I visited their site months later, trying to figure out why I hadn't been able to connect).
The #hotel I was using had a local provider that blocked #Fediverse instances (including Mastodon.Social), #Diaspora, #XMPP, #IRC, and a certain mail provider that I still use. They did not block: #Facebook, #Twitter, #GMail, or Outlook / #Hotmail
Because I couldn't connect to the VPN, I discovered how many perfectly normal sites were blocked because they weren't on the top 100 list. I went downstairs and informed the front desk that I would be leaving their establishment because of their blocking.
I received a phone call from their networking vendor, who logged into their router and proxy and turned off filtering on a list of about 25 sites they'd blocked.
But the point is, the hotel and its provider cannot be trusted not to fsck with your data. Always use a VPN.
♲ @mhoye@mastodon.social: Just typo'ed a servername while reconnecting to an IRC channel, and accidentally put in libera dot net instead of the correct dot chat, and you wouldn't believe where I found myself: Back on Freenode. Who've apparently secured that domain, and are using it to try to trick people back on to their services.
It seems that #Freenode registered Libera dot net in order to trick people into using their #IRC network instead of #Libera.Chat's network.
Such scumbags. If you're still using Freenode, what are you waiting for? About the only thing they haven't done yet is publicly expose the identities of IRC users.
channels -- over 20K ... Why would someone let their channel remain there, given recent history?
servers over 20 ... if I was an organization sponsoring a server, I would talk to OFTC, LiberaChat, Rizon, and maybe a couple of other major #IRC networks to decide which network to move the sponsorship to.
#FSF and #GNU #IRC channels to leave #Freenode. It was supposed to be an orderly transition with officially sponsored channels to be replaced with unofficial '##channelname' channels, but Freenode seized those channels suddenly.
Later on, they changed server software without transferring the user & channel databases, so every user and project choosing to remain there had to re-create from scratch.