Recently I wrote an article named “IRC: Too Complicated?”. It turned out to become one of those article that sparked a bit of discussion left and right, and caused my inbox to fill up with comments as well. The tone of some of those were much darker, that of IRC to be on the decline in general. Could it be that bad? And if so, is there a possibility it can be stopped, or is IRC really doomed? In this (much larger then you’re used too from IRC-Junkie) article I will try and find out.
“It seems IRC has been on a steep decline for the past few years” Darkmyst admin Ryan said to IRC-Junkie. “I wasn’t aware of the full extent of this problem until I actually looked into it a few weeks ago.” Ryan had a look on Netsplit.de and compared some of the usercounts of some of the networks. Some examples:
QuakeNet, 242,000 users in 2005, today 160,000 (minus 33%).
EFnet, 2003 141,000 users, today, 70,000 (minus 50%).
DALnet had 136,000 users in 2002, down to 40,000 (minus 73%).
GameSurge, in 2004 51,000 users, today roughly 30,000 (minus 41%).
What causes are behind this decline in users?
“Some of these were affected by DDOS problems”, Ryan from DarkMyst continues. “Some by internal staff problems. But much of, I believe, is also related to IRC simply being on a decline. As a result of the networks themselves, and new folks simply losing interest.”
“The oldtimers and a few new ones appear but for the greater majority of people there are more attractive alternatives to chatting. We’re losing against IM clients, forums and communities primarily I’d say”, DALnet admin Ahnberg shares with IRC-Junkie.
This last might well be the source of the problem. Instant Messaging (IM) offers a lot IRC at one time had a monopoly on (chat and filetransfer for example). And not just that, IM managed to improve those and then add a lot of functionality on top (webcam, user friendliness, etc.).
And also Jason, webmaster of SearchIRC.com, agrees, and names a few other problems. “Those that have left have been lured away by 1) p2p programs. The people who were on IRC for warez have other alternatives that work better. 2) desktop IM clients Desktop IM clients offer one on one conversation in an environment that is safer, more dependable, and more private than IRC. 3) web based chatrooms. The primary reason for web based vs IRC is convenience, stability and security. Users don’t have to launch a separate client to join the conversation, and the webmaster need not concern them self with unregistered users, spammers, etc intruding on conversations.”
When sharing his opinion on a possible decline of IRC, Jason thinks its more a shift rather then a decline. “Somewhere around 2002 the numbers began to level out. The big networks have taken the hardest hit. Its almost as easy to start your own IRC network as it is to start a channel on an established network. New networks start up when existing networks fail to meet the needs of certain groups, or make them feel unwelcome. As a result, there has been a population shift. Large networks are experiencing reduced numbers. The demographics have changed. But IRC remains vibrant.
But there are of course other reasons for the decline of networks. DALnet had a lot going for it, and was very popular amongst its users. “We’ve been a friendly network with lots of user interaction, services that allows the users to “own” nicks and channels that differed quite a bit from the philosophies from other major networks”, admin Ahnberg explains. Then in 2002 (see Netsplit graphs above) a long series of DDoS attacks aimed towards the network started. “We lost a lot of servers,” Ahnberg continues, “some temporarily, others permanently. It took some time to recover from this with existing and new servers, new staff and all the difficulties that comes with negative times.” Although the network is still up and has a faithful share of users, the attacks resulted in a drop of over 70% user count wise.
What could be done to tackle these problems?
Some of these issues have been tried to solve. For example to improve filetransfer the DCC2 protocol has been written in 2004 (IRC-Junkie reported about it on the 25th of April). Due to lack of involvement from larger IRC client coders this project was never successfully implemented.
Another solution would be to simplify the way IRC works for the newbee user. This is exactly the goal of the IRC+ project. A first draft of this RFC has been written and can be found here.
“IRC standards are very outdated”, KVIrc developper and IRC+ project member Alexey starts. “You can’t even make very basic IM functionality in IRC. IRC was coded in age of Unix shells, command-lines and gurus, who can work absolutely without GUI. But this age is gone.”
The goal of IRC+ is to “make IRC simple, modern, powerful. It should allow to manage nicks and channels via simple user-friendly interface. You will not be forced to learn commands anymore. But you will be able to continue chat as now if you don’t like this idea. It will be absolutely backward-compatible.”
XChat author Zed agrees and agreed to support the IRC+ project. “NickServ authentication and registering a nickname is far more difficult than it should be. Your IRC client should ask you for a nickname and password and then take care of it. But that’s impossible, because the ircd authors all like to do their own thing. Instead you have to remember some cryptic commands, which vary on each and every network.”
In practice Zed sees that the users of XChat on first time connecting to a network see simple GUI where they can register a nickname, instead of the need to figure the commands out.
To get IRC+ going, and be a possible solution for part of the problem, it will need the support from IRC services coders. “Anope said that they are very busy and have a lot of other work. No other services have been contacted yet”, IRC+ project member Alexey Uzhva explained.
IRC-Junkie asked Entrope (involved with ircu development amongst others) about the implementation of IRC+. “Compared to other features that have been suggested? No. If we had infinite coder time? Probably not even then”, Entrope replied. “The features implemented by IRC services (as matters of network policy) are not really uniform enough across networks to make that kind of standard very useful.”
So, the coding part of the IRC community seems to be too divided to implement something like IRC+ or DCC2. But there is something to say in favor of that as well, it is part of IRC to be different. If networks were interested in offering homogeneous services there would be no need for so many types of different networks in the first place.
Former Undernet server admins Jason and Mregit tried to tackle some of the problems with the use of a website: SearchIRC.com. “At the beginning of the school year and then again at Christmas thousands of users signed on to IRC with virtually no technical knowledge or even an understanding of how computers work”, Jason starts. “They were overwhelmed by the vastness of IRC and the complexity of IRC clients. In order to make IRC more user friendly, we turned to the web. While mregit and I were going over the details of an IRC website specific to our Undernet server, she offhandedly said it would be really cool to list channels from ALL networks and have a way for users to just pick the one they wanted and magically join it.”
Are there other ways to bring new users to IRC?
DarkMyst found one way to tackle the problem. “One thing DarkMyst has done to alleviate the problem [...] is install a WebChat , which is essentially just CGI:IRC, and we included a code generator for webmasters that generates the code for them and allows them to copy/paste it directly onto their site.” Ryan thinks also helping the user forward is very important. “We have a very, very extensive help section complete with walkthroughs, frequently asked questions, screenshots explaining how to install mIRC, and even web-friendly copies of our services help files on our site.”
On a personal note, during active solar storms I lead a channel for spaceweather enthusiasts spread globally that gather there to chat and possibly share their experiences watching the northern lights that can show up as south as Florida in the US or Spain in the EU during very active storms. The channel is also in use by a bot that feeds every few minutes the latest solar wind data straight from the satellite in a way that would be practically impossible to achieve with IM.
What will the future be for IRC?
Ahnberg: “Over time I foresee a decrease in the total amount of users on all the networks combined as explained in my above view of our comparison with IM, forums and communities. I feel the same is going to happen with DALnet too, even though I hope it will be quite a while into the future.”
“IRC will still be here” Jason starts. “Its the content that changes. A year ago our list of the largest 100 channels on IRC was overwhelmingly warez, and if asked I would have told you the future of IRC was firmly in the hands of pirates. Now gaming channels are popular. [...] What IRC will be like tomorrow is whatever people are going to be talking about tomorrow.”