diggan
epolanski
I'm unironically convinced that vBulletin forums are to date the highest form of discussing many topics online.
Not only they are alive and the best resource for many things (modding, hardware, radio, photography, specific car brands) but I swear 99% of work-related discussions would benefit from having a forum as their central hub, instead of the split of slack/teams/jira/mails/videocalls.
danielbln
That's a very charitable view on vBulletins. Do you not remember threads with 100 pages that are impossible to surface any information from? I would hate a vBulleting as a central hub, it's an information black hole, it's not suitable for tickets (jira), not suitable for real time communication (slack), and so on. It was a product of its time, but I think we found better solutions now.
diggan
> Do you not remember threads with 100 pages that are impossible to surface any information from?
As someone who still consumes threads like that, it's part of the charm and beauty. None of the stuff is ranked/upvoted/liked, no one is competing to have the most followers, just conversations/arguments between humans for the sake of communication and understanding. Requires a bit more time and effort to read, true, but everyone being equal makes it feel like a pretty OK tradeoff, at least for me.
Of course, not all forums are like that, some still have vanity-metrics, but at least the forums I still participate work like that.
epolanski
> That's a very charitable view on vBulletins. Do you not remember threads with 100 pages that are impossible to surface any information from?
There's rarely reasons for that.
Example on MBWorld:
https://mbworld.org/forums/e-class-w212-109/
Example from HWUpgrade (italian hardware forum):
https://www.hwupgrade.it/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=13
I regularly read many forums to date and they are a great fit for long running discussions.
They are less confusing than slack/jira but easier to consume than email threads.
> it's not suitable for tickets (jira)
You can literally open a thread per ticket, same way you would open an issue on GH.
With good organization and barely any moderation you can go far.
I swear 20+ years ago we organized 80+ people World of Warcraft guilds all through forums (progress, economy, race-specific discussions, meetings, politics, website development, extensions, etc) and nobody ever felt like "yeah, it would've been better with a reddit/hn-style board or in a chat". Ever.
Yet today I'm split across 4 inefficient communication channels, plus another two/three different softwares for issues like GH/GitLab, documentation (confluence) involving half a dozen people lol.
wsatb
Have we? I think vBulletin has mostly been replaced with Twitter and Reddit, which are often very difficult to surface information from.
I think the major advantage of old forums is the community. You don’t really get the sense of community on a large network, which causes a host of other problems.
numpad0
Was it seriously the only way to read vBulletin forums? I could just fetch each whole >>1-1000 on old 2ch.net forum topics[1] and Ctrl+F anything I wanted. List of topics were Ctrl+F friendly too. There were party apps that could search all forums with titles, and fetch updates for all topics. vBulletin seemed nothing like that to me, was that really not me being outsider but just how it was?
1: https://web.archive.org/web/20170728043031/https://egg.2ch.net/test/read.cgi/jisaku/1478413388/
2: https://web.archive.org/web/20170715143439/http://egg.2ch.net/jisaku/subback.htmlSecretDreams
It's at least suitable as an archive. Tickets just end up being a place where information and lessons die once the problem is closed out. Sometimes impossible to find an old ticket without considerable searching.
olyjohn
I mean, have you tried to search a Facebook group, or any of the modern social media? There's not even any way to organize things, except for maybe some sticky posts. Forums were broken up into all sorts of sub-topics, and you could search them by actual keywords, and use real filters. These days the search just shows you shit that they want you to engage with, not what's actually relevant. A well moderated and curated forum is extremely easy to find information on without even searching.
You're 100% right though, it's not suitable for real time communication. I wouldn't want it to be. Facebook groups have "chats" now, and it's mega impossible to keep up, and nobody actually reads them.
diggan
Hear hear, so sad that many forums disappeared, although as you say, many are still alive. The first (Swedish) forum I was active on, is still around with new threads being posted once every 10 minutes or so, and lots of active discussions. So it's not all doom and gloom, but I do agree I wish more communities used regular forums.
nonethewiser
I think the flat list of comments is strictly worse than a tree for representing a conversation.
Although in other ways I do agree with your sentiment. The discussions happening there were usually of higher quality and nuance than you see online now. There are many factors to that though, including some that have nothing to do with vBulletin itself.
bluGill
The problem with a tree is if the discussion gets long eventually several branches reach a point where someone being discussed in one is just a variation of what is being discusses in a different once and you need to bring the two back.
dfxm12
Some discussions benefit from real time communication, some don't. More than considering what the "best" platform is, I wish my org would pick one thing in each category and stick with it. We don't need teams AND slack. We don't need teams AND zoom... I think that's where the real problem lies. It's harder to get comfortable with the software this way.
diggan
> Some discussions benefit from real time communication, some don't
Agree :) Consensus in the development community seems to be "Everything should be in Discord/Slack/Teams", so moving towards what you mention would be great.
> I think that's where the real problem lies
That certainly does sound like an issue, but I cannot say I've ever experienced it myself, maybe I've been lucky. At "worst", sometimes there is one tool for private/internal use, but for public community, Discord would be chosen, for example. But never "We're using both Slack and Teams internally", that'd be crazy.
The number of times a development community I want to join is exclusively on Discord though, instead of a public forum, is something I constantly encounter.
numpad0
How? I'm aware that it's the single most used forum software across the English Internet, but it's extremely wasteful in screen real estate and not so intuitive to use.
diggan
> but it's extremely wasteful in screen real estate and not so intuitive to use.
Sounds like a theme issue rather than vBulletin issue. Most of the vBulletin forums (of yore at least) were so heavily customized you couldn't even tell it was vBulletin, except for the ever present smileys :rolleyes:
bluGill
Forums can be great, but even today most don't have the concept of "I've already seen this". That makes it hard to follow the latest discussions. The few that do have that concept are great, search them out.
olyjohn
Every time I logged into a forum, it would highlight all the unread posts. The latest post pushed the thread to the top. I'm not sure what forums you used that weren't like that. PHPBB and vBulletin both did that by default.
Meekro
I used (and ran) phpBB-based forums back in 2007, and even then it would tell you which threads have new posts for you to see.
diggan
> but even today most don't have the concept of "I've already seen this".
Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but the way that normally works, is that you go to the last post you remember reading, then continue from there. So start at last page, go back until you remember what you're coming across, continue reading from there.
Probably only works for small/medium-sized forums though, the biggest forum I frequent only have ~20-40K users active and most (popular) threads die after 300-400 posts.
s_dev
They are terrible -- there is a reason you're using hacker news and probably reddit. The voting system is far superior to any FIFO out Pringles can of comments.
diggan
> there is a reason you're using hacker news
It's not because of the threaded comments with vanity-metrics, I can tell you that :) I've gone as far as to write my own HN client that displays HN comments as a flat list of comments, sorted by date that also folds in whatever they replied to as a proper quote, so you can follow along. Looks like this: https://i.imgur.com/TNfg9Vg.png
Surely, I cannot be alone in sometimes going extreme lengths to remove this sort of pointless popularity sorting?
sph
Voting systems indirectly operate as propaganda that tells you what to believe and how to conform with the hive mind. “Good thought” is conveniently found at the top with a large number of virtual points, “bad thought” is hidden for you at the bottom in harder-to-read colour.
I surely am not the only one that often skips to comments without even reading the article, which is tantamount to saying “I don’t have time to form my own opinion. Tell me what to believe about this topic”
epolanski
> there is a reason you're using hacker news and probably reddit
It's a good place to talk stuff that's popular, but discussions fade and die quickly.
Also, I still use vBulletin-like forums.
Examples from the last decade I still use: mbworld.org for discussing Mercedes cars, bitcointalk, hwupgrade, overclockers.uk and some others.
Reddit/Twitter absolutely cannot replace any of those I listed for long lasting specific discussions, they are just unfit.
bluGill
I use HN and reddit because they are a source of interesting third party articles on random topics that then can be discussed in depth. Forums are a source of original discussion on a given topic. Those are very different things that meet very different needs.
pabs3
HexChat has been explicitly abandoned, and the former maintainer didn't want it continued under other maintainers. No major forks yet, but Debian has a couple extra patches.
its-summertime
The maintainer did a public statement asking for interested contributors to message him but no one practical did.
pabs3
I did and was rejected.
Suppafly
I started feeling bad about having used mIRC for 20ish years without paying for it so I switched to HexChat. It does everything I need and has a simpler interface, but I do sometimes miss the hacked up pirated copies of mIRC that were customized with scripts to do different things.
>Edit: Hm, seems it was some time ago I checked out the news/blog of HexChat, seems like last version was a year ago.
Pretty sure it's had security updates more recent than that, but I don't really pay attention.
ido
wouldn't the more logical course of action be to pay for mirc? the devs do not benefit from you "no longer pirating" by switching to another client.
boxed
A year ago seems like very new when talking about an IRC client to me.
vkaku
HexChat was maintained for a good 14 years and had a final release last year. It requires active community maintenance to stay alive:
futurecat
Halloy is a nice IRC client. Written in Rust and has a beautiful icon.
airstrike
halloy now supports image embeds too, which is awesome given that has become "table-stakes" with how prevalent Discord is
And it's time for my biweekly shoutout to iced, the wonderful GUI library used by halloy
nicce
Sometimes old things don’t need a rewrite just for the sake of language-based advertising.
Suppafly
>Sometimes old things don’t need a rewrite just for the sake of language-based advertising.
"X but in Rust" seems like the primary purpose for Rust to exist as far as I can tell.
xattt
Ah yes, Rust IRC clients of the 1990s always trigger my fond nostalgia of the old Internet.
/s
johnea
> seems like last version was a year ago
If it works, don't fix it...
I read HN in hexchat, on Libera.chat ##hntop...
Urgo
For mIRC's first 20 years when you bought it, the license was for all future versions for life. In ~2016 though that changed and they expired all previous lifetime licenses. Now you get a license only for a year.
I know I shouldn't be upset as I did get a ton of use out of mIRC in the 90s/2000's and they probably didn't expect it to still be around and updated to this day, but expiring something sold as lifetime just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. They should have honored all previous lifetime licenses and just made new ones follow the new rules.
You can see the changes on various pages here [1] pre 2016 and post 2016
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20160215000000*/https://www.mirc...
Suppafly
>In ~2016 though that changed and they expired all previous lifetime licenses. Now you get a license only for a year.
That almost alleviates my guilt over having used it forever without paying for it.
indrora
> now you get licenses only for a year
I have been using the license I bought in 2010 for the last 15 years now. I have, since then, ended up purchasing several licenses for friends and none have had issues updating. I recently just reinstalled using that 2010 license.
He will retain the information for a license for up to a year to retrieve it again
Urgo
Looks like this no longer is included in the FAQ, but here is an archived copy directly on mirc's website about the lifetime license going away. It looks like the lifetime ones were downgraded into 10 year ones. It looks like at least when this FAQ was live you could email him and ask for a new one for free once it did expire so that was nice, but unsure if that is still being honored as the FAQ has now been removed [2]. He did try to make you feel bad about emailing though asking.
Full text copied from [1] for ease of reading
>> Question: I have an old registration that is not working, can you help? Answer: When I originally offered a lifetime license in 1995, it seemed like a kind and fair thing to do. However, I did not expect that I would still be working on mIRC twenty-five years later. The lifetime license means that I am still supporting and providing updates to every user that has ever registered. This has become gradually more difficult and has reached the point where, sadly, it is just no longer possible. If your registration is over ten years old, if you can, please consider registering again. Your continued support for mIRC would be really appreciated. If you register again, you will receive an updated registration automatically. If you cannot afford to register again, or would rather not, that's okay, just email me. However, please be aware that it will take time for me to reply.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20201001000000*/https://www.mirc...
SomeUserName432
> For mIRC's first 20 years when you bought it, the license was for all future versions for life. In ~2016 though that changed and they expired all previous lifetime licenses. Now you get a license only for a year.
That does not seem to hold true..
I do recall that the older licenses expired, but my current active mIRC license was issued September 2018.
reverendsteveii
That's enough to make me glad I never bought a license before and excited to never buy a license again. After all, why should I enter into an agreement that can be unilaterally voided by the other party?
alecsm
I started coding in the early 2000s in mIRC Scripting. It felt like magic. With only a few lines I could add stuff to the context menus, write auto responses, etc.
I remember doing an "AI" bot that you could talk to. If it recognized any words you said it would get a random predefined string from a .txt and send it to you. And a lot of "hacking" scripts. Fun times.
sph
Same. In the 2000s the mIRC scripting scene was buzzing, so many interesting scripts pushing the boundaries of the language to the point of binding directly into the Win32 API to do pretty much anything. We had music players, custom GUIs, bots, colour themes, all hand crafted by teenagers. I used to spend all my days chatting and browsing mircscripts.org
It’s weird how that scene has just disappeared and no one seems to have written about it in retrospective. I keep thinking I should be the one to write about an article about that long lost art, but it’s so long ago and memory is a bit hazy.
I was so annoyed when I moved to Linux and I had to chat with KVIRC which was so inflexible and rigid compared to mIRC.
tymscar
Please do write about that. It would be a shame to not have any material about it!
SomeUserName432
> I started coding in the early 2000s in mIRC Scripting. It felt like magic. With only a few lines I could add stuff to the context menus, write auto responses, etc.
You could write entire projects in mIRC, there was more or less nothing you could not do.
You can write custom UIs, use raw TCP/UPP sockets.. you could write mIRC in mIRC.
It was in its time quite empowering. Very few languages were mature enough to truly compete with it for simplicity in it's time (even Visual Basic, which would win out on UI, but lose on sockets etc)
mike503
Same. One of my first forays into scripting. TCL for eggdrops too. Spent a lot of time and energy on IRC :)
chrisvalleybay
Me too! I still remember /perform, and even more fondly when I figured out how to create dialogs that would then trigger slash commands.
NoNameScript was extremely inspiring in that regard. Not to mention the color theme of Brevduva Script.
Good times!
marsavar
Gosh, that brings back memories! I remember having so much fun coding my own trivia bots in mIRC Scripting Language (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIRC_scripting_language) over 20 years ago.
patwolf
Same. mIRC scripting was really what motivated me to learn to program. I had tinkered a little bit with BASIC before that, but mIRC was what kept me interested. It's one thing to write uninteresting "hello world" CLI apps, but mIRC scripting was something you and your friends could immediately interact with. I wonder if kids today have something similar...maybe Roblox scripting?
riffraff
yeah I think the "this is immediately useful for me" part of mIRC scripting was a key driver in pushing kids to learn programming, and it seems lost in modern times.
But, perhaps, we're just not young anymore.
diggan
> maybe Roblox scripting
That, but also Discord is basically what people use on computers for communication today, and Discord also has bots.
Of course, you cannot just willy-nilly write your own client for a Discord bot without dealing with tons of hassle, compared to how easy it is to write something that uses the IRC protocol, so not sure it's the same "instant gratification".
TrackerFF
IRC is what everyone used for group/channel chats back when I grew up, out in rural Norway. Most towns had their #town channels, down to some very small hamlets that are barely populated today. Man, all the memories.
Always had some joker that had download some nefarious script (legit script-kiddies), that they'd share on the channels - and eventually get permabanned from.
Then MSN messenger became popular, and kind of drove away the more casual users. And after that social media became a thing, and the rest is history. Haven't really used IRC in 20 years now. The people that continued to use IRC were mostly gamers, for team chats etc. But I guess discord killed that, too.
nobleach
Just here to bask in the nostalgia. I hit up bash.org from time to time just to remember what was... and what will probably never be again.
patwolf
I haven't used mIRC since the 5.X days, but I recall the author always included an updated profile photo in the about page. It was interesting to watch him age with each release update.
I downloaded this version to see if that was still the case, and sadly the about page no longer includes a photo.
nly
And if you clicked his nose it used to squeak.
raluk
I learned programming using mIRC scripting. There used to be bunch of quiz chaneles about trivia. I logged channel to collect questions and then wrote script that provided response after some time based on linear function k + n*len(response). That was my fist piece of software I wrote. mirc scrpting based on event system was super nice system to work with. Later I also wrote chat bot and i collected have some funny conversations with strangers.
bn-l
We had a school server. It was so exciting back then. Having long, live conversations with people by text was a new thing. It was the first time I had spoken to people in that form at my school and had seen their “text” personality (which is different to what you get IRL).
jackvalentine
For anyone who remembers that drama about lifetime licences being suspended unless you email him and have a whinge - this pissed me off immensely but a few months ago I tried my old licence that had stopped working and it worked again so I guess awful policy reversed.
ndegruchy
If I still used Windows, I would still use mIRC. I bought a copy ages ago and it's still one of my favorite clients. Highly customizable and fast as hell.
crazymoka
Started my mp3 collection with mIRC client. I believe my first mp3 was Killing in the Name by RATM followed up by Sober by Tool. Showed my friend how to play music on the computer and they were blown away. The good old days. Finding help for SQL, programming was a lot faster than today for some subjects.
Sometimes I pop into HexChat but the servers I used to use aren't there or not as good. Freenode? I think it was called.
Rodeoclash
Undernet on the #zeraw channel is where I spent a bit of time hanging out. You'd trade open FTP servers, I assume sysadmins had misconfigured them, that other users had uploaded games to.
Games used to be split by disk files, i.e. 1.44mb individual files, and I would download 1 - 10 overnight while my friend would grab 11 - 20. We'd later call each other and use Zmodem to build a full set each.
Fun time to be on the internet.
lm411
It was a hell of a time to be on the internet, for sure.
Security was basically non-existent or so badly implemented that it was a joke.
Some fond memories of my early teenage years:
- Causing net splits to steal ops / takeover IRC channels
- As part of a warez group, using site to site FTP transfers to move massive (at that time) amounts of warez without being limited by my 14400 modem
- How crazy easy it was to crash/DOS pretty much any computer on the internet
- Taking over company networks just for fun, and putting in backdoors that drove the sysadmins nuts
Yeah, I was a shithead teenager, and am sincerely sorry to the sysadmins I messed with, as I am a sysadmin myself now.
Eventually I ended up having many FBI-instigated meetings with the RCMP Commercial Crimes Division... They had boxes upon boxes of paper printouts from sniffing my connections.
I think I got off partially because of my age (about 14). But also the fact that the telecom company I was using had illegally sniffed incoming telnet sessions to my Linux box before there was any warrant, and had logged in using credentials they had sniffed to read many personal emails between my brother and myself, and other friends that used the system.
I realized what they were doing pretty quickly, but, I'm pretty sure their recklessness in doing that is what saved my butt in the end. This was a big crown corp telecom company.
Suppafly
>Undernet on the #zeraw
I totally forgot about warez being backwards sometimes. I still visit #bookz but don't really pirate games and other media much anymore. Piracy really is a service issue and not a pricing problem once you're an adult with real money.
Delk
Freenode kind of got destroyed after the organization operating it was sold, and the new owner made changes that caused lots of volunteers to resign. Channels and people mostly moved over to Libera Chat.
Scoundreller
A lot of universities quickly did traffic shaping/limits to p2p apps (outside of the internal file sharing networks).
But IRC was exempt or under the radar :)
nly
Well file transfers via DCC (the IRC transfer mechanism) are direct. The receiver connects directly to your machine or visa versa.
As someone who grew up on Windows + mIRC + vBulletin forums (late 90s, early 00s), mIRC will always ignite fond memories :)
For those who still use IRC, but maybe on other platforms than Windows, HexChat could be considered a spiritual successor to mIRC, but it's also open source and available on a ton of platforms. Just a happy user here, not affiliated in any way.
Edit: Hm, seems it was some time ago I checked out the news/blog of HexChat, seems like last version was a year ago. I still use it without problems, but maybe people could share any active forks if they know about them?