Retirement of IRC Services and KDETalk.net (Jabber)

[Ben Cooksley]

On Mon, May 22, 2023 at 10:05 AM argonel <argonel at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, May 21, 2023 at 3:12 PM Ben Cooksley <bcooksley at kde.org> wrote:
> >
> > On Sun, May 21, 2023 at 10:42 PM Christian (Fuchs) <kde at fuchsnet.ch>
> wrote:
>
> >> Bouncer wise: 30 connections isn't exactly none, especially if that
> contains
> >> active people. These would be forced to migrate to a service (and
> register at
> >> such) which is not under KDEs control and, as far as I am aware, has a
> >> mandatory registration.  As far as memory serves some communities, e.g.
> I
> >> think krita, still had active devs / maintainers on IRC.
> >
> >
> > Yes, there is a cost-benefit analysis to all services we run however -
> and if there is a minimal number of people benefiting from it, sometimes it
> is time to retire a service.
> >
> > Note that the 30 I quoted was a count of TCP connections - so included
> inbound and outbound links.
> > The number of connected clients is much, much smaller - so it is
> possible there are some IRC connections still active for people that are no
> longer around, or who have moved to Matrix and not deactivated the BNC.
>
> I would argue that the low usage is in part due to lack of awareness.
> It has a one-line mention on the "Internet Relay Chat" community wiki
> page (which wasn't added until 2019) that doesn't even explain the
> benefits of using it.
>
> IRC in combination with the BNC is much more suited to intermittent
> usage than Matrix is, which currently obligates the user to "be
> active" every 30 days, or risk (permanently!) losing access to the
> entirety of the history of all of their joined channels (even the
> parts for which they were present). The BNC happily buffers the text
> until your client is able to reconnect. As an example, this allowed me
> to read discussions that happened while I endured an extended power
> outage, even when Matrix had decided that I was idle for "too long".
>

Not sure what the bots do on the IRC side, but this kicking due to
inactivity is actually due to IRC and the bridging between it and Matrix.
It isn't an issue of Matrix itself as a protocol / software stack - it is a
limitation imposed on the Matrix side to help Libera.chat with connection
load.


>
> So instead of shuttering the service, I recommend that more attention
> be drawn to it.
>

There are currently 114 people registered to use the BNC, so it appears to
be rather well known among our community members.
The decline in it's usage has correlated rather well with the rise of
Matrix, so it appears that those that favour a BNC type experience find
Matrix works just as well / better.

Thanks,
Ben
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