The End wrote:ericbarbour wrote:Strelnikov wrote:A private subreddit to go with their administrators board where they talk crap about users behind their backs. And this is anything different from the Wikipedia IRC and the Wiki email list most people do not know about, how?
Well, as you remember (because you saw it happen), in 2014 we tried to create a #wikipediocracy channel on the Freenode IRC server. And that little wankball Maurizio "Snowolf" Lussetti kicked us all and locked the channel out. And keeps it locked out to this day. So perhaps the WOers figured Reddit would be one place to have chats without the constant threat of being kicked out by Wikipedia whores--I assume.
How stupid is it to keep using IRC in this day and age anyway?
I remember a conversation with Kelly Martin on WPO about IRC and its decline with Wikipedians. IIRC, most of the younger Wikipedians prefer voice-chat over IRC now. IRC is a dying medium. For a website that had a large number of teenage and early adult editors, you'd think the WMF would be embracing more up-to-date communication venues for its volunteers. It's hard to believe Giano and his cadre declared war on IRC years ago.
They are used to IRC, their friends still use it, etc. The problem with VoIP is if somebody gets inside the channel who is there to
troll by playing loud soundboard files of movie dialogue or whatever. The software doesn't have an automatic gain control to kill noise.....certainly they have passwords to make these channels private, and IPs can be banned or rangeblocked, but the dedicated troll is resourceful. So IRC wins on that front.
The truth is that there is an entire range of "obsolete" technologies still used for communication, usually by hobbyists. Morse code is still a thing in amateur (ham) radio, either using a straight key or a paddle keyer, as is slow-scan television and modified forms of analog TV. Ham radio still uses radiotelegraph (RTTY) and Hellschreiber* as transmission modes. IRC looks like an ASCII version of PSK31, a digital two-way radio mode that requires a computer, a digital-to-analog converter box, and a solid state shortwave ham transceiver. It is possible to talk to people around the world on less than thirty watts using this mode.
IRC's advantages are that few people know it exists and no records are kept (unless you are cutting and pasting things). It's disadvantages are that it looks awful, you have to zoom in to keep the eyestrain down, there are no chimes to tell you that somebody has posted something, and faster typists get the drop on slower typists.
* Hellschreiber is a fax mode invented in the 1930s in Germany by a Dr. Rudolf Hell. It only scans the dark bits of an image with no halftones, so it really only works well with printed material like typed communiques or letters. The modern version uses a computer hooked to a transceiver like with PSK31.
Still "Globally Banned" on Wikipedia for the high crime of journalism.
