Some concerns about the IRC chat.

submitted by [deleted] from self.whatever

  1. The chat is supposed to be subreddit-specific and an accompanyment to the subreddit, right? Allowing users to use nicknames other than their username doesn't make sense; this isn't something like Snoonet, it's part of the website itself. It's like if FB users didn't have to use their FB names in FB chat.

  2. It doesn't make sense for the operator/s of a channels shown prominently in a subreddit's sidebar and explicitly linked to be the subreddit to be whoever opened the chat first, and not the subreddit mods.

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[–]magnora7 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Hey thanks for the thoughts, we appreciate you taking time to give feedback on the site. Here's my thoughts on your ideas.

  1. Changing names is a part of IRC protocol, and the amount of time it would take to change this would be better spent elsewhere, imo.

  2. Again this is part of IRC protocol, and we'd have to build some sort of bridge between the site and the moderator system. We would have to build some sort of IRC account spoofing system to take the place of the moderators when they're not around, and then allow them to take control of the account when they connect. It would be a difficult programming hurdle, to say the least.

The changes you're talking about would probably take 20-100 hours of programming... we have got bigger fish to fry at the moment.

These are things we could look at eventually, but at the moment we have much higher-priority things to accomplish. Plus people can just register fake saidit usernames anyway, so disallowing them from doing the same in IRC doesn't mean too much, imo.

I do agree that eventually the sub mod should be the IRC channel mod, that's the best idea here imo. This is something we'll probably try and figure out a way to eventually automate, but I have a feeling it's not going to be easy because the IRC software is not really designed to do that. So hopefully this is something we can roll out perhaps over the next few months.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Sorry, did not realize it would be so difficult to implement.

[–]magnora7 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

It's okay, a lot of this stuff seems like it should be easy but ends up being super difficult. Like just changing from /r/ to /s/ was like a 40-hour project, but you'd think it'd be like a 1-hour find-and-replace type of deal... the code almost always is more complex than I'd expect. Some things that seem easy just aren't.

I really do appreciate the feedback and thoughts on the site. Outside perspectives are super valuable and let us know what people care about. It's just that we only have so many hours a week to devote to this, so we have to choose our battles very carefully, so to speak.

Anyway, I've taken your suggestion of making the sub mod the IRC channnel mod and put it on our to-do list. It's a good idea :)

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Like just changing from /r/ to /s/ was like a 40-hour project, but you'd think it'd be like a 1-hour find-and-replace type of deal... the code almost always is more complex than I'd expect. Some things that seem easy just aren't.

Yeah, I've heard of how crazy tangled the Reddit codebase was. That was one of the motivations behind a redesign, i believe.