Instead of shutting down IRC, it'd be beautiful if @mozilla instead were to choose to improve it for everyone.

Improving IRC would be difficult without violating its standards, and even then, client support would be limited. Better to switch to a Free solution like @Mattermost and improve that where needed: mattermost.org/

It wouldn't.

why?

IMO IRC is fixable, cf. IRCCloud's integration with Slack, where the client you use is just connected to a fancy IRCv3 server managed by IRCCloud. I'm sad we are not investing in IRCv3 instead of just switching off IRC.

I think a major *protocol* problem with IRC is that it has the broken windows problem around harassment. People can be abusive and there's no way to clean that up. You just have to wait for it to go deep into scrollback.

Abuse comes from abusers. If the new system is equally open abuses can move. If the difference is authentication we could require that in IRC since its our own server.

You need *very* active moderation to catch abuse as it happens. Being able to clean it up quickly after it happens is a step that you need available. A lot of channels already require registration

I suspect @dveditz means an active Mozillians account, perhaps only one that’s vouched for.