Tom, How many people are going to research an IRC client, install it, get it connected, and figure out NickServ, just for one network? Sure, it may not be a walled garden, but it's yet another client that must be installed, whereas Discord is very likely already running on a person's device. Since I mentioned the Discord link in this thread, nine users have joined, and their account ages span from 3-9 years. All it took for them to join was clicking or tapping the link, which has very little to no friction. All this proves my point that IRC simply does not have that level of awareness, convenience, and ease of use. Kind regards, Ryan Hamel ________________________________ From: Tom Beecher <beecher@beecher.cc> Sent: Wednesday, August 20, 2025 9:37 PM To: North American Network Operators Group <nanog@lists.nanog.org> Cc: Ryan Hamel <ryan@rkhtech.org> Subject: Re: Where else do you hangout? Caution: This is an external email and may be malicious. Please take care when clicking links or opening attachments. How is Discord a walled garden? Because you can only access the service using their official client. That's the definition. You cite in another message that IRC clients are 'too complicated' with 'too many commands'. Spoiler alert : actual network engineers do WAY more complex things every day than paste a hostname and learn a few slash commands. If that's 'too hard' for the next generation of network engineers, then they probably want to consider a different career path. On Wed, Aug 20, 2025 at 10:15 PM Ryan Hamel via NANOG <nanog@lists.nanog.org<mailto:nanog@lists.nanog.org>> wrote: John,
Discord is walled garden.
How is Discord a walled garden? Choosing to sign up for the platform and joining an instance is a user's choice, and way more user friendly, than jumping through the hoops to get an IRC client set up, connected to a server, get their handle registered, make sure they identify correctly to the "NickServ" should the network be running a services package like Anope/Atheme. I can go on and on. Ryan Hamel ________________________________ From: John Todd via NANOG <nanog@lists.nanog.org<mailto:nanog@lists.nanog.org>> Sent: Wednesday, August 20, 2025 6:59 PM To: North American Network Operators Group <nanog@lists.nanog.org<mailto:nanog@lists.nanog.org>> Cc: John Todd <jtodd@loligo.com<mailto:jtodd@loligo.com>> Subject: Re: Where else do you hangout? Caution: This is an external email and may be malicious. Please take care when clicking links or opening attachments. There is a marginally active #nlnog (irc.nlnog.net<http://irc.nlnog.net/>) and fairly active #networker channel that I lurk on despite not speaking Dutch - but they are mostly European. I am on several Slack groups that are DNS-focused. There is the DNS-OARC Mattermost. I do sort of prefer IRC - Slack becomes quickly fragmented into "helpful" topical sub-groups that I never have the time to look at - one layer of categorization is plenty. Discord is walled garden. Social media is barely functional for conversations - it is a broadcast mechanism. Email lists are also functional but have been dying out in favor of... nothing. I am on some IRC channels dedicated to very narrow subjects (all OSS-related.) If someone wants to champion an effort to re-invigorate an IRC channel, I'd probably be there. I just looked at the Freenode #nanog - three other participants. I'm not even sure if that was the server/channel that I had used in the past, so pointers welcome if there is a more lively channel. As with all open platforms, keeping the really off-topic chatter down is a challenge. It drives people away. Also, there needs to be some minor gatekeeping, otherwise #nanog would become "I can't print - is the internet down?" I have no answers on this issue, though. JT On 20 Aug 2025, at 17:39, jim deleskie via NANOG wrote:
I haven't been on IRC in a long long time. Damn I'm old. :(
On Wed, Aug 20, 2025, 8:36 PM Mark Prosser via NANOG <nanog@lists.nanog.org<mailto:nanog@lists.nanog.org>> wrote:
I was chatting with some industry colleagues recently and I realized that various sectors of our industry are not "online" in the spaces I'm online.
Perhaps there was a time when most of us were on mailing lists & IRC, but now the communities seem fragmented and behind walled gardens (Mainly Discord and Slack .. the latter is deleting our messages faster and faster).
Personally, I'm subscribed to several discord groups (including NANOG), several slack groups, a few mailing lists, IRC (I'm not on that often these days), one or two Matrix groups, IETF Zulip...
This quickly becomes cumbersome and I find myself mainly in Packet Pushers & NAF Slack groups -- while being "reachable" in other places. I feel like I'm missing out on conversations outside of the few bubbles I participate in.
Where do you spend most of your time, outside of this mailing list? Why do you like it there? What kind of folks hangout there?
Warm regards,
-- Mark Prosser // E: mark@zealnetworks.ca<mailto:mark@zealnetworks.ca> // W: https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fzealnetworks.ca%2F&data=05%7C02%7Cryan%40rkhtech.org%7C510c98a030154458bf7108dde0566f13%7C81c24bb4f9ec4739ba4d25c42594d996%7C0%7C0%7C638913384017592359%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=7%2BT0khhhtAsmet22LflJi2r12XVukiqkt7nCPhA9RE0%3D&reserved=0<https://zealnetworks.ca/><https://zealnetworks.ca/>
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