Thoughts on IRC

WOW! I have never seen any statement(s) of mine so beautifully contradicted.

 

I'm not really going to reiterate anything that's been said so far, because I think most of the benefits/shortcomings for IRC and Skype and Aim have all been laid out.

However, I'd just like to make a quick note about Skype that personally dissuades me from the service for URPG. I don't mean this to be rude, but Skype is kind of a very personal program, and that isn't great for URPG. It's often used for kids to video chat with parents/family members, or with real life friends working on homework assignments, or even for work interviews. In all of these circumstances, you'd be using a personal account that has your full name, phone number, sometimes picture (profile pictures are generally pictures of yourself in my experience), I think even your state/general area. I think a lot of people would be very uncomfortable sharing this information with strangers in a Pokemon game, and also the parents of some of our younger audience would feel the same. Because Skype is an audio/video software, this wouldn't normally be a problem, but for our, mostly text-based, purposes, sometimes people don't want to share that kind of information.

Now, I think there is a way to create a more blank account that includes less of this information (like fake name, default pictures, etc. Though I'm not sure about phone #). However, the main sell of Skype seems to be that people already have the service, so they can quickly integrate into our community. If new members would have to create new accounts anyway, to hide their personal information, Skype kind of loses that edge. Also, Skype in general is known to be a more personal program, people may be dissuaded to use it at all because of that.

This obviously isn't a super firm point, but it's some food for thought that hasn't been mentioned yet.

 

I was discussing this a bit earlier as well, and I wanted to post this thought here as food too.

There are some URPG members that are bound strictly to the forums because for whatever reason, they don't have an AIM or Skype account and therefore aren't in our AIM or Skype chats. These members bound to the forums are subsequently missing out on the full URPG experience: being able to chat in real time with members, being able to battle/participate in contests in real time, being able to join our live auctions, and pretty much everything else we do on AIM & Skype. If we go to something that doesn't require a download like IRC, we're basically opening up doors to other URPG members and giving them the opportunity to get the full URPG experience and to get help in real time rather than waiting for someone to respond to a thread. I like the idea of being able to include as many people as possible into the world of URPG.

 

I'm not staff or anything, so I'm not sure I'm even welcome in this convo--
I use IRC elsewhere about 100% than I use AIM. I signed up to AIM before it required b phone numbers, but I had to go into a Web client for it that barely fit on my tiny laptop screen, when maximized, and since I signed up using Facebook, my username to login and as me as a friend/contact/whatever was just [a long string of numbers]@Facebook. Which was a pain in the ass, as I didn't know my username when I asked to be added to, say, the Battle chat.

AIM, I never use it. It's horribly inconvenient for me. But hey, I'm just one person. But now to hear is going to be even more-ostracizing by requiring phone number at sign up? I wouldn't have even joined. I think you'll find the number of new members at AIM, especially minors, (who, if following safe browsing practices, are cautioned to NEVER give out personal information,) is going to drop drastically, and eventually stagnate. In other words, don't drop AIM as a client, but don't expect it to be a client for anybody but "oldbies."

Skype, I think we can all agree that is horrible. There's no dice, messages don't send, you can't see who is online unless you have everybody added (or maybe I just have an old client-- which in and of itself has given me TONS of problems), and as Elaine mentioned, shows everybody your contact information, which, if you're using your personal skype (which was the intent, otherwise you have to not only make a new account, but keep switching accounts), is again, personal information. Plus, you've got to download it, if you haven't got it already. Plus, it's not supported-- you'll find the majority of posts on their help forum suggest installing the newest update-- which sometimes it's already listed by the client as being installed-- and nothing else. Worse, maybe, is the frequency with which they update the program needlessly, with extraneous features and annoying graphical changes; fucking clutter.

I hate skype. It's a huge jerk and i hate it. Skype is responsible, in my mind, for blowing my hard drive, laying me nearly all of my files from the past 8 years-- I actually found out about it, or it happened, on the day I was going to back everything up and update my comp. Anecdotes you don't care about. Still, I'm on Skype pretty much everyday. If it weren't for being nigh unusable for things like battling, something that requires relatively rapid responses, I could agree with you, HKim, on moving over to skype being a viable option. As it is, though, skype is broke and good luck getting the little money-grubbers to try to fix it.

As for IRC, I don't know what problems you ran into in the past. IRC is accessible, customizable, easy to moderate, supports links, emoticons, dice rolling, special privaleges to admits and mods, making quick temporary rooms for whatever purpose necessary (Oh, how about Free-For-Alls? Copy them to pastebin later, if you need to.), and doesn't require a download, an install, your personal info, your phone number, your money, your soul.

If there Is ONE problem u could imagine you having in IRC, is that it requires people to actually go to it and log in, where in skype or AIM, a user might potentially already be logged in there, too chat with friends. If course, there are ways to open and log in auto magically when you open your browser, or clients that you could run and forget about like skype and AIM, but then you're actually doing work for functionality, yuck.

Tl;dr? IRC is fucking amazing compared to what you have now. And I'm a little upset and a little insulted that there's any argument against it, aside from the half-hearted, "it didn't work last time." Do understand though, that a switch to IRC will be most effective if it is a HARD switch, and that would likely be unhealthy to URPG.

Yours, Truly.

 

I'd like to say that I appreciate everyone's comments and thoughts. It's important that we maintain a calm and constructive discourse as we move forward.

That being said, please refrain from using coarse language in the discussion. It is inappropriate.

I'm not sure if it was mentioned, but we are going to be running a trial of IRC chat to determine interest, activity, and viability. I would like to caution everyone that this is only a trial and there is no guarantee what we plan on doing afterwards. We'll analyze the results and determine our path from there.

Perhaps I'm getting old. I've been here a long time and I've seen a lot of changes occur throughout the URPG. I've watched it evolve and grow. It has given me a... long-term view of our community. I hope that gives me a bit of credence, but I could also be wrong. You are my peers, but you are also my friends and family.

I would like to say that history cannot and should not be ignored in any case. Successes and failures of the past should be taken into account for to do anything otherwise is to proceed as if we had not learned anything. It would also be an insult to all of those who worked hard to ensure that this community, our community, is what it is today. These members and leaders strove to create a place we can all gather and have fun and we must honor their work. Did they make mistakes? Yes, of course. We've had many problems ranging from inappropriate behavior to park Pokemon issues to failed roleplaying implementations. We've failed before and we'll fail again. But we must learn from those failures. We must acknowledge why they occurred because only then can we grow.

This time, I ask that we take a good look at what we did before and analyze what went wrong. Then try and ensure we do things a little differently to see if we can make it work. If we can, great. If we cannot, it is simply another lesson to learn. We must all have patience in this endeavor, but we must also all have wisdom.

And the courage to carry forward this community.

 

Before I start in my ramble: Truly, you're definitely welcome to post in Trainer's Court threads if you have something (relevant) to say!!! Don't be afraid to speak your mind on a matter or ask questions! Just remember what Harry said about not using inappropriate language. Your opinion is definitely welcomed though.

Hi, friends~!

Harry mentioned the trial of the IRC chat, and I've been put in charge of that. ;3 I'm a frequent IRC user, and I'm on the Bulbagarden chat daily, so I definitely know what I'm doing. I was going to mention this sooner, but I wanted to get a staff post in first before I went forward with announcing it to the public.

Like Harry said, I do want to do a trial for the IRC chat. I think that would be the best way to fully see how this would work out for URPG since in my eyes, we seem to be a bit on the fence about it, or maybe some of us just don't really know what IRC is or whatever the reason is. I have the fullest intentions of starting the trial on March 1st and letting it go until July 1st so that myself and the URPG staff can get an accurate view of how things are working out for the IRC chat; should this schedule change, I'll definitely let y'all know. I don't intend to deviate from that March 1st starting date, however, unless my personal life becomes a burden over the next couple of weeks. (I doubt that though.) On June 1st, I'll have a survey for all URPG members to fill out as they desire so that we can have that as well for people to voice their opinions as well; that will go until June 30th.

The channel does already exist and is registered as of right now if anyone wants to pop in and take a peek. Monbrey has added a chat to his site, linked here. If you want to use the Bulbagarden chat, linked here, type "/join #urpg " without the quotes once you get in. Either one will get you in there. For those that are using an IRC client such as mIRC or HexChat, the server is irc.systemnet.info and the channel is #urpg . Right now, it's just myself, Ash, & the bot for dice rolls, but I will put the chat information out there now in case anyone wants to familiarize themselves with the chat ahead of the trial period.

I have the intention of making three battle chats plus an FFA chat; I feel as if that would be more than enough to start us off, and if we need more, they can be added on an as needed basis. I also have the intention of revising an old guide for IRC that I've written strictly for URPG purposes. There will possibly be IRC exclusive events, such as auctions and an unofficial mini-tourney.

If you have any questions regarding the trial, just mention me in this thread, catch me on AIM or Skype, or send me a VM or PM on any of the three forums URPG is on. (Admittedly, I do check PWN and BMGf a lot more often than PXR, so I'm more likely to see a message there than I am on PXR, just in case you're trying to get a swift response.)

Fear not, my friends, for this is moving forward!

 

let's so valentine's day stuff on irc for all us lonely hearts

 

The trials have began. Please check out our IRC channels!

http://bmgf.bulbagarden.net/f394/irc-trial-173516/
No More AIM
IRC Trial


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