Bridge Between Skype and IRC

But whether you're talking about the original ZEJ Skype group or the IRC-Skype pipeline, the fact was there were several people who literally stated IRC did not work for them, and now the fact is our IRC isn't active enough to make most people feel it warrants willingly opening their IRC client just to sit in a mostly-quiet chatroom. In regards to accessibility to newcomers, since our IRC plugin is working again I won't deny that's simpler for the average person to access, but once again, the IRC is very inactive nowadays, whereas our Discord has a little under a dozen people online at any given time, and-- to be blunt-- has ZEJ's more friendly faces. Even if it isn't easier for most people to access, it's not that much harder for its trade-off of being a better environment to give potential newcomers.

As for the IRC-goers who still haven't joined the Discord? Honestly, if they want to stay behind, let them. Saying so is counter to the overarching goal to keep our community united, but if it really matters that much, everyone (especially the Staff members of the community) should be taking steps towards that end. The overwhelming majority of the community has essentially already decided where the real chatroom is, seeing as our Discord's general text channel sees more activity by far than #CoE. I won't pretend some of us won't still have to go and keep on opening our IRC clients to participate in #Manaverse so long as some of the most integral and active participants of that chatroom abstain from Discord, though.

 

I'll make sure to ignore you too while actually considering this, asshole.

 

I'd be down for Discord over IRC. I'm not sure how much weight my opinion might carry here among people who are essentially "ZEJ Veterans."

I like Discord's display better, to be honest. The names are big, there's avatars, you can easily see who's online (and even anybody offline), it's simple switching between rooms and entering/exiting voice channels. If the appearance of the Discord chat is that big of a deal-breaker they even have an IRC style display for the actual chat portion of the screen. The ease of voice and private chats, and I guess the easy use of separate rooms within the same server, is definitely a plus over IRC.

The activity difference is something I can agree with too. I haven't used it in a while, so I can't say how the Skype-IRC pipeline and general Discord use have affected it, but I remember back when I did hop on once in a while it wasn't very active. There were certain times you would find people chatting, other times it'd be an empty room or maybe just a single person. Discord is fairly active! Dark and Starr are usually on. Nate, Eebit, Cerby, and myself are also on most of the time. We've had Jonno and Krista hop on for the first time today, and I know Jonno seemed pretty excited about the chat :5

And it is frequently updated, in fact, while I was writing the sentence going "There were certain times... single person." Discord notified me of a new update! Apparently they'll be implementing a search feature soon? So that's pretty exciting. It's also more accessible, really. As a desktop app, I don't necessarily have to be on ZEJ to be able to access the chat. In fact, Discord has an Android/IOS app as well! I have it downloaded, myself, and the Discord chatroom is literally right there if I ever want to check it while I'm not home! Literally any time, as long as I have internet or cellular connection! I recall I once tried to use IRC on my phone, I believe this was when there were issues with the hosted client link, and it was very... Difficult. Ultimately, I could not connect to IRC and was so frustrated I gave up on trying. Not an issue with Discord. There's literally an app.

I guess if I had to sum up my opinions, I'd say that Discord as a whole just gives a better feeling of community and activity compared to any time I've hopped onto IRC in the past. I can have the community there whether I'm playing a game, writing an essay, or dicking around on Netflix looking for something to watch.

Anyways, that's my two cents, I guess.

 

I approve of going to Discord, if only so that I can have all my internet communities on a single program.