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> These 1) don't work when you need them too

They don't? They work perfectly fine for me and always have. Citation needed.

> 2) are very much antifeatures

According to whom?

People use and profit from these features all day, every day on Slack and Discord. Whether you put any stock into them doesn't make any difference: they are features for a vast number of people other than yourself, they are definitely features.

> I really liked how on IRC you just sent messages and that was the end of it

I did, until I realised I and other people didn't have to spam the text channel with minor corrections to spelling, grammar, and markdown formatting with further messages containing the edits — and those messages may themselves contain errors, necessitating further ex post facto editing with more new lines.

> that would describe IRC better than discourd IMO

The day I can log into any IRC client, web or otherwise, without having had to set up my own bouncer and leave it running at home exposed to the internet or pay for a server, and it negotiates my IRC capabilities, joins all my channels, re-opens my private messages, shows me my chat history, and gives me a scrollback of the messages I've missed since my last session, I might be inclined to agree.

Not to mention what happens if I typically connect to multiple servers.

Until I am no longer forced to use such ugly workarounds to what should be simple session management that practically every other chat service has figured out, even before Discord and Slack, I don't consider IRC to 'just work' except in the sense that, yes, a non-negligible number of people have managed to get their fragile IRC configurations working just-so, likely on only one machine — good for them, but I have higher standards.



> People use and profit from these features all day, every day on Slack and Discord. Whether you put any stock into them doesn't make any difference

You have totally missed the point of what I said. I know some people want them and it's nice to be able to correct your "there" to "their." That's fantastic, good for them.

My complaint is that these features are abused by nasty people who you end up having to work with. By not having them they can't be abused. When I can't trust software running on my own machines to accurately tell me what someone said yesterday that's unacceptable. I'd rather the thing not work at all than give me bad data.

And I don't think there's any bigger work around than having to screenshot an app every time certain people send you a message.


> My complaint is these features are abused by nasty people who you end up having to work with

I mean, not being able to edit or remove messages, by one's own and those of others in the case of a moderator, can be just as susceptible to abuse.

Abusive messages not being able to be removed, potentially and needlessly staying in front of hundreds or thousands of users' eyes is one issue I can come up with off the top of my head. Especially true for IRC clients that provide image previews for posted spam links if those links contain disturbing content (and no, it's not a reasonable response to expect people to turn those off; people can enjoy media the way they want, not just the way you deem fit).

> When I can't trust software running on my own machines to accurately tell me what someone said yesterday that's unacceptable

Just as well Discord, Slack, and others put a little "(edited)" annotation next to edited messages. Plus, one can only edit one's own messages; moderators cannot edit other peoples' messages as they can on forums.

> I don't think there's any bigger work around than having to screenshot an app every time certain people send you a message

Bots can log messages, including message editing and deletion events. If your preferred Discord/Slack server provides a public log, that sorts that out; if it's your own Discord/Slack server, you can provide your own bot. These can be as simple as 20 lines of Python, maybe less. I'm sure services like Mattermost, which seems to be the top open Slack clone, would facilitate these features more easily.

I would imagine Mozilla would keep logs. Further, Discord also automatically provides a moderation log to keep a history of all those events.

It really sounds like you're inventing to do with software with which you've little experience.


> people can enjoy media the way they want, not just the way you deem fit

Unless the official client doesn't support it of course. (showing edits as new messages is a great example of this.)

And I'm not saying they shouldn't be allowed to enjoy that, but everything has trade offs and automatically opening links from strangers certainly has a lot of those.

>Just as well Discord, Slack, and others put a little "(edited)" annotation next to edited messages. Plus, one can only edit one's own messages; moderators cannot edit other peoples' messages as they can on forums.

I'm well aware of that, it still doesn't help me when I need to see the original version of the message.

> Bots can log messages,

Having to run personal bots is one of the arguments you've made against IRC. Furthermore, it's often not allowed.

> If your preferred Discord/Slack server

If I could pick the server most of my problems would go away.

>It really sounds like you're inventing to do with software with which you've little experience.

I have less experience with it than IRC, when I used to use IRC it was voluntary because it was actually pleasant. I never use slack, discord, or lync/skype voluntarily, but I've been forced to use all three by various organizations.




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