I've been enjoying torturing the crap out of FESUSGL through slack so it got me thinking if maybe we could have an IRC channel for the whole site too? A mediocre IRC server with #meh #drone and #whateverelse channels.
@MrGlass freenode reserves channels that start with a single # for official use by projects and groups. A Mediocre employee should be able to claim #meh and #mediocre, though there's some paperwork involved.
@carl669@mrglass@drunkcat I was thinking of trying to find an IRC server/ run one for one of the scavenger hunt things soon... I'd need to try to find the bot/addon to irc clients... I haven't messed with that in so long...
There are still a small chunk that chat in: http://www.wootstalker.com/chat.php As Carl669 mentioned. Though, other than the wootstalker, we tend to talk about anything but woot. You all should come join us!
@MrGlass I did some quick digging and the game looked pretty cool... but they did release the source code and there are a few projects to try to restore the game.
@MrGlass I have to admit I'm confused. The user-facing portion is so IRC-like that I took right to it. Commands start with slashes and generally overlap IRC syntax, ops get @ signs, channels have # signs, it has bots. I don't point those out to argue that it is IRC so much as to say why I thought it was IRC, but I'm genuinely interested in the difference.
@editorkid@MrGlass@christinewas@sohmageek for what it's worth I find Slack to be the best chat program I have ever used. I never messed around too much with IRC but always found it to be old, ugly, unintuitive, etc.
After starting to use it for work I converted my old group chat with friends from California to Slack and haven't looked back. Integrations, notification options, and the rock-solid mobile app are enough for me to never want to use another chat program.
@JonT I used to be a moderator in an irc server. I ran one for a little bit.... I also dabbled a bit in running a MUD/MOO. If that tells you anything about my younger days. :) Yes IRC is ugly, old, but powerful. It's like command line, no one likes to deal with command line, but it's very very powerful.
@sohmageek I haven't delved too deep into all of the settings/integrations in Slack but it seems pretty damn robust to me. I think sometimes people (myself included) just plain like the old thing they're used to even when a newer, better thing is available.
@JonT I wouldn't mind Slack but IRC is 'closer to the metal' so to speak. There's a lot of fluff in slack and it sometimes runs pretty sluggish and glitchy (especially when it tries to figure out what line you just read or just gives up and still notifies you.)
I've always used mIRC and while old it still looks nicer than this new era of white-space.
@DrunkCat mIRC 6.0 FTW. After my employer cracked down on it ("security concerns," they said. "Block the port," I said. "We can't because we use it," they said. Ha!), I had to use a CGI::IRC gateway. Every refresh was a new pointy stick in the eye...
As far as IRC vs. alternatives, IRC simply is not a modern protocol and has a whole mess of things it doesn’t do stacked up against the only thing it does do. I mean hell, Its basic function hasn’t been updated since bandwidth cost $$$$$$$$$ and every bit mattered, the idea of a chat system with no backreading capability whatsoever is depressing in this day and age.
@mfladd Yeah but for some reason I have a feeling that Mediocre would use them as a gauge of popular opinion on the matter; which would mean a Mediocre IRC server is currently just a pipe dream.
I had this discussion with some other people after the GISHWHES thing, where we used slack and enjoyed it.
The biggest benefit of slack vs IRC is chat history. IRC is not friendly in the mobile era, since you have to leave your client on the whole time to "read history". Slack works well because history is kept.
Asynchronous chat is important because you only need to log on and read what happened in the past few hours, post a reply, then log off. IRC is synchronous, which means you need to idle in the channel and catch someone online to talk to.
The major concern about slack was that you need to invite people by email address, while IRC has guest access.
Forget about hipchat, I tried to set that up after GISHWHES but guest access cannot see history, forcing you to sign up for an account anyway!
chat.zoho.com might work because it has guest access with history, but the interface is from the 90's.
My verdict after that was we should just bite the bullet and use slack. If people don't like to share their email address to get invited, then they don't have to join!
@Odi Chat logging depends on the client though. Sure if you're offline all together you don't get any messages but I'm not a big fan of idlers in IRC channels anyway.
Or, we just use the public chat that's already up and running. can be run via web or program. Already has a population, already has bots to help you buy meh/woot stuff. I mean, it already exists and is running. There's a chat client for both Android (For free) and iPad (Paid).
If you're worried about missing people a VM system is set up, so you can leave people messages that they can get when they long in.
@Bogie@DrunkCat IRC on any mobile device is a battery and data drain if you want chat logs. I used to frequent IRC in the desktop days, but ever since I got an iPhone 3G, I rarely use it.
@Odi IRC isn't really a platform that is meant to have 'chatlogs'. If you're in the channel it's cause you're gonna participate (or I guess lurk). If you're not in it then you don't need to know what happened in it.
@DrunkCat That is also the downfall. In the desktop age, people leave their computers on and when they come back, they can look back however much they desire. Then they can jump into the current conversation with context. Or they could be browsing the web with IRC in the background, so if people say something, they get a notification and can see if it interests them.
In the mobile age, unless their phone is constantly connected and draining battery / data, they log in, see nothing going on for a few minutes, and their screen locks, disconnecting them. With chat history, they might have realized people were just talking, but someone needed to go walk the dog, so activity would resume in 15 minutes.
I have used IRC for many many hours, including building bots to do certain things we needed. An IRC Bouncer like ZNC is a step in the right direction (I will use it), but for the general population, IRC is non-mobile-friendly a platform. Just the fact that every IRC app needs a "stay connected when in background" option shows that mobile multi-tasking is not quite where it needs to be for IRC.
@Odi I still don't understand how that's its downfall. That's like saying a fish's downfall is its inability to climb. Also jumping in mid conversation is 80% of bash so I'm not really seeing a negative there.
@Odi@DrunkCat One weird trick that really ushered my IRC experience into the 21st century was switching to WeeChat's relay feature. It pairs with a mobile app that loads messages and notifications on demand. (There is a similar program called Quassel but its mobile options are not as good).
I've used a variety of IRC proxies over the years and while this still takes some amount of initial setup, it's far more mobile-friendly than using a full IRC client. There is also an excellent web interface to WeeChat at http://glowing-bear.org/ (also available as a mobile app) that does previews of image and video links, like Slack.
I basically grew up on IRC, and will note that some of the more interesting cultural aspects of IRC exist because of its lack of pervasive logging. While Slack is modeled after IRC in presentation, it intentionally doesn't try to emulate the open community aspect, which is more akin to social media. It's great as a paid service for company chat; I don't think it occupies the same niche as the public IRC networks.
I also have issues with Slack being a centralised service on a closed platform. IRC has survived as long as it has largely because people were able to create their own networks.
@Lotsofgoats brings up a new alternative not discussed previously in the topic and you guys derail the point by pushing your IRC crack some more without even addressing his suggestion, what gives? Little Timmy wants to go to college, get away from him drug dealers!
@Lotsofgoats Discord is a great system and getting better every week, I’d definitely be on board with hanging out with some fellow mehmbers on Discord, it certainly holds more appeal for me than dragging the dinosaur that is IRC out of retirement in 2016 and has many many many features IRC does not have with a feature set that’s growing constantly. The best argument for it over Slack would be that it is completely open, no email address required for people so inclined to keep their info private. Slack does have some really nice features that Discord lacks but, Discord is coming into its own and seems set to square off solidly against Slack, Skype, Teamspeak, Mumble, and Ventrillo.
@Lotsofgoats@drunkcat@jbartus I’m on IRC every day FOR work (best way to get support as a developer). In fact, I’m so dependent on it I semi recently set up my own bouncer to proxy my connection.
If your going to go to a new chat service, IMHO slack is cool - but I don’t think I could handle a meh slack.
@Lotsofgoats yeah I’m consistently impressed with everything they’re doing. Their corporate culture (can you call it that when they aren’t making money yet?) is really interesting to observe from the outside.
@MrGlass All of what you say is true, but it’s not the best place because it’s user friendly or powerful, it’s the best place because getting a free IRC channel on some host is free, most developer types have at least a passing familiarity with it, and it keeps the ignorant general population out by imposing a confounding and archaic interface. In short, it’s not used because of how good it is for building a community around, it’s used because it’s the free thing that most people that support people want to be bothered with dealing with can figure out.
IRC was great back in the day when everybody who used computers had regular interactions with command line, your average computer user today is baffled by the very concept of the cut down version of DOS that is command prompt, IRC is just baffling to them. There’s really no good argument for using IRC other than the fact that it’s free and some people are still used to it despite a myriad of superior offerings on the market. IRC was great in 1988 but it hasn’t been meaningfully updated in well over a decade.
@jbartus IRC is a protocol. Its not a client, platform, or company. Its closest equivalent is probably HTTP or FTP.
IRC is not a client, service, company, or anything like that. Its an international standard for how to transmit chat messages.
There are a lot of IRC clients out there, and many have archaic interfaces (from what you said, it sounds like you used IRSSI?). Plenty of others, though, are easy to use & have all the features of modern chat apps - tabs, emoji, embedded images or even video. In fact, I can’t think of a multiplatform IM or chat client that doesn’t support IRC.
There are many reasons not to use IRC. The biggest impairment to adoption is probably the need for a user to get and setup a client (instead of just opening a page in their browser). I think, however, that the recent shit further away from IRC is not from UX problems, but general business/ecosystem shifts.
Moxie Marlinspike is the hacker/developer behind signal, the encryption tech the powers the full encryption available in a bunch of these new chat services including whatsapp, googles new chat allo, and signal. He recently published a blog post about the entire software ecosystem moving away from open protocols like IRC. He goes into the reasons these old systems go stale, the problems with making a new open protocol, and ultimately why he thinks that his chat system will never be federated like IRC, email, http, etc. Its well worth a read if your interested in these trends.
@MrGlass I am well aware of what IRC is, as you say a more precise term would be to refer to it as IRCP but… I’m not out to reinvent the wheel so we’ll just keep with calling it IRC like people have for ages.
As far as clients, I’ve used all manner of clients over the years including mIRC which I believe you specifically called out earlier (or was that @DrunkCat?) and while some are quite a bit more modern than others I have yet to see one that truly places the user experience for non-technical people as the number one priority. Every single client I’ve seen for IRC is deficient in one area or another, largely stemming from developers starting with a goal of resolving a pet issue while leaving things alone that they didn’t mind but that aren’t especially user friendly.
Multiplatform offerings like Pidgin or Trillian suffer from similar issues though different in cause, namely that they seek to be multitools and therefore develop to the least common denominator in terms of feature support. Many functions that are present in one chat system won’t get picked up in these multiplatform offerings because there’s a limited scope with the feature only benefiting a fraction of their users. Mind, this was all an issue even before Skype’s API was shut down forcing people to run multiple apps if they wanted to use Skype as well as other chat systems.
As for your last, the UX problems are a manifestation of the issues discussed in the article you linked. When you own something you can pretty much do what you want with it, when you’re using an open standard you’re subject to the whims of everybody else using that standard if you want to implement something new. Those bits about extensible federation apply as much to IRC as they do to XMPP, those modern clients with support for all of these things don’t represent a consistent user experience between all users.
For example, someone might post a piece of ASCII art in an older fixed-width IRC client and everybody else in the chat will miss the joke they were trying to make because they’re all using more modern clients with variable width fonts. A new user might need to adjust some setting that’s handled via command in the client the person helping them is using but is buried in four layers of menu on their client because it’s an uncommon setting and because they’re on mismatched clients they aren’t able to get the help they need. Consistency of experience is important to building up a community, it’s a big part of why even when the Skype API was exposed people were so reluctant to switch to things like Trillian or Pidgin, the inconsistency of features was killer, nobody wants to be left out of the joke that everybody else is laughing at.
If the protocol were evolving with standardization of new more-modern features it would be seeing more use, but because it’s federated making such a global change is effectively impossible.
there was a deals.woot channel that i think is still active and has quite a few 'mehricans. http://www.wootstalker.com/chat.php
someone also set up #mediocre on Rizon last year, but i don't know if it's still active.
@carl669 It's not. No one ever showed up to that channel.
@carl669 I still hang in the wootstalker chat daily. I'm a sad nerd. Shut up.
I would join #meh. Looks like #meh is registered on freenode, but empty
@MrGlass freenode reserves channels that start with a single # for official use by projects and groups. A Mediocre employee should be able to claim #meh and #mediocre, though there's some paperwork involved.
They would accept ##meh for general use, though.
@carl669 @mrglass @drunkcat I was thinking of trying to find an IRC server/ run one for one of the scavenger hunt things soon... I'd need to try to find the bot/addon to irc clients... I haven't messed with that in so long...
There are still a small chunk that chat in: http://www.wootstalker.com/chat.php As Carl669 mentioned. Though, other than the wootstalker, we tend to talk about anything but woot. You all should come join us!
@dashcloud has also talked about wanting to get something like this going.
Slack, anyone?
@editorkid Boo. Gimme IRC so I can connect using my znc server
@editorkid Privacy issues. And you have to invite people.
@MrGlass @christinewas Ah. It's pretty clearly a skin slapped on an IRC server, so I didn't realize there were other issues.
@editorkid Slack is actually pretty weird under the covers, even though it's superficially like IRC. They do provide an IRC to Slack gateway though.
@editorkid Its not IRC. Supposedly, it was an internal chat server for an MMO that failed, so they made a client for it & had a successful business
@MrGlass I did some quick digging and the game looked pretty cool... but they did release the source code and there are a few projects to try to restore the game.
@MrGlass I have to admit I'm confused. The user-facing portion is so IRC-like that I took right to it. Commands start with slashes and generally overlap IRC syntax, ops get @ signs, channels have # signs, it has bots. I don't point those out to argue that it is IRC so much as to say why I thought it was IRC, but I'm genuinely interested in the difference.
@editorkid @MrGlass @christinewas @sohmageek for what it's worth I find Slack to be the best chat program I have ever used. I never messed around too much with IRC but always found it to be old, ugly, unintuitive, etc.
After starting to use it for work I converted my old group chat with friends from California to Slack and haven't looked back. Integrations, notification options, and the rock-solid mobile app are enough for me to never want to use another chat program.
Slack is love, Slack is life.
@JonT I used to be a moderator in an irc server. I ran one for a little bit.... I also dabbled a bit in running a MUD/MOO. If that tells you anything about my younger days. :) Yes IRC is ugly, old, but powerful. It's like command line, no one likes to deal with command line, but it's very very powerful.
@sohmageek I haven't delved too deep into all of the settings/integrations in Slack but it seems pretty damn robust to me. I think sometimes people (myself included) just plain like the old thing they're used to even when a newer, better thing is available.
@JonT I wouldn't mind Slack but IRC is 'closer to the metal' so to speak. There's a lot of fluff in slack and it sometimes runs pretty sluggish and glitchy (especially when it tries to figure out what line you just read or just gives up and still notifies you.)
I've always used mIRC and while old it still looks nicer than this new era of white-space.
@DrunkCat mIRC 6.0 FTW. After my employer cracked down on it ("security concerns," they said. "Block the port," I said. "We can't because we use it," they said. Ha!), I had to use a CGI::IRC gateway. Every refresh was a new pointy stick in the eye...
@JonT @DrunkCat @editorkid clearly there’s no accounting for taste… or lack thereof.
mIRC…
/me shakes his head
As far as IRC vs. alternatives, IRC simply is not a modern protocol and has a whole mess of things it doesn’t do stacked up against the only thing it does do. I mean hell, Its basic function hasn’t been updated since bandwidth cost $$$$$$$$$ and every bit mattered, the idea of a chat system with no backreading capability whatsoever is depressing in this day and age.
I've got #mediocre setup on EFNet- would be happy to see folks there, but if there's another channel people are actually using, please do tell.
Talk City!
Only one star? Y'all are disappointments. :(
@DrunkCat Fixed
@DrunkCat Stars are like badges....
@mfladd Yeah but for some reason I have a feeling that Mediocre would use them as a gauge of popular opinion on the matter; which would mean a Mediocre IRC server is currently just a pipe dream.
@DrunkCat How come you're not in the IRC channel I set up?
@dashcloud Because no EFNet server seems reachable from where I am.
@DrunkCat Is FreeNode reachable from where you are?
@dashcloud Yes it is. :D
@DrunkCat Okay- I've set up #mediocre on FreeNode then.
If you'd rather do ##meh, I can do that.
@dashcloud I don't mind either way, it's the meh folk that would have an opinion on that.
the irc channel is super dead
I had this discussion with some other people after the GISHWHES thing, where we used slack and enjoyed it.
The biggest benefit of slack vs IRC is chat history. IRC is not friendly in the mobile era, since you have to leave your client on the whole time to "read history". Slack works well because history is kept.
Asynchronous chat is important because you only need to log on and read what happened in the past few hours, post a reply, then log off. IRC is synchronous, which means you need to idle in the channel and catch someone online to talk to.
The major concern about slack was that you need to invite people by email address, while IRC has guest access.
Forget about hipchat, I tried to set that up after GISHWHES but guest access cannot see history, forcing you to sign up for an account anyway!
chat.zoho.com might work because it has guest access with history, but the interface is from the 90's.
My verdict after that was we should just bite the bullet and use slack. If people don't like to share their email address to get invited, then they don't have to join!
@Odi I thibk that's where I've landed, as well. People can always create meh-specific email addresses if sharing bothers them.
@Odi @christinewas So do we have a general Meh Slack chat? Or does each project/game/etc have its own channel?
@dashcloud right now, I believe we only have small "teams" for individual things.
@Odi Chat logging depends on the client though. Sure if you're offline all together you don't get any messages but I'm not a big fan of idlers in IRC channels anyway.
Or, we just use the public chat that's already up and running. can be run via web or program. Already has a population, already has bots to help you buy meh/woot stuff. I mean, it already exists and is running. There's a chat client for both Android (For free) and iPad (Paid).
If you're worried about missing people a VM system is set up, so you can leave people messages that they can get when they long in.
The only thing missing is, well, you!
@Bogie @DrunkCat IRC on any mobile device is a battery and data drain if you want chat logs. I used to frequent IRC in the desktop days, but ever since I got an iPhone 3G, I rarely use it.
@Odi This is why I setup a ZNC server. I can connect, read history, and then quit and my server keeps logging things.
@MrGlass Ooo that is exactly what I need, thanks!
But for the general population, I don't think they are going to go through the trouble, hence Slack is still more "ready out of the box"
@Odi but I find slack super annoying on the desktop :) Anyway, join the IRC & create a slack
@Odi IRC isn't really a platform that is meant to have 'chatlogs'. If you're in the channel it's cause you're gonna participate (or I guess lurk). If you're not in it then you don't need to know what happened in it.
@DrunkCat That is also the downfall. In the desktop age, people leave their computers on and when they come back, they can look back however much they desire. Then they can jump into the current conversation with context. Or they could be browsing the web with IRC in the background, so if people say something, they get a notification and can see if it interests them.
In the mobile age, unless their phone is constantly connected and draining battery / data, they log in, see nothing going on for a few minutes, and their screen locks, disconnecting them. With chat history, they might have realized people were just talking, but someone needed to go walk the dog, so activity would resume in 15 minutes.
I have used IRC for many many hours, including building bots to do certain things we needed. An IRC Bouncer like ZNC is a step in the right direction (I will use it), but for the general population, IRC is non-mobile-friendly a platform. Just the fact that every IRC app needs a "stay connected when in background" option shows that mobile multi-tasking is not quite where it needs to be for IRC.
@Odi I still don't understand how that's its downfall. That's like saying a fish's downfall is its inability to climb. Also jumping in mid conversation is 80% of bash so I'm not really seeing a negative there.
@DrunkCat People jump into conversations, regardless. It's more annoying when they do it without context.
@christinewas Look it was a terrible trade and you know it.
@DrunkCat @christinewas wassup? ;)
@DrunkCat Pay phone : 1-800-COLLECT :: Desktop : IRC
@Odi @DrunkCat One weird trick that really ushered my IRC experience into the 21st century was switching to WeeChat's relay feature. It pairs with a mobile app that loads messages and notifications on demand. (There is a similar program called Quassel but its mobile options are not as good).
I've used a variety of IRC proxies over the years and while this still takes some amount of initial setup, it's far more mobile-friendly than using a full IRC client. There is also an excellent web interface to WeeChat at http://glowing-bear.org/ (also available as a mobile app) that does previews of image and video links, like Slack.
I basically grew up on IRC, and will note that some of the more interesting cultural aspects of IRC exist because of its lack of pervasive logging. While Slack is modeled after IRC in presentation, it intentionally doesn't try to emulate the open community aspect, which is more akin to social media. It's great as a paid service for company chat; I don't think it occupies the same niche as the public IRC networks.
I also have issues with Slack being a centralised service on a closed platform. IRC has survived as long as it has largely because people were able to create their own networks.
This is all way above my head but I signed up for a Slack account anyways. Maybe play around with it layer today.
Was there any kind of agreement on where the chat is/might be?
@Teripie FreeNode #mediocre
@Teripie the honest answer is no, @DrunkCat is an IRC proponent
discord, anyone?
@Lotsofgoats there are 3 of us diehards int he meh chat, right now! you should join.
@MrGlass A link would probably help.
@DrunkCat irc://irc.freenode.net/mediocre
@MrGlass @DrunkCat IRC b& at work, but discord is new enough that it still isn’t
@DrunkCat @MrGlass
@Lotsofgoats brings up a new alternative not discussed previously in the topic and you guys derail the point by pushing your IRC crack some more without even addressing his suggestion, what gives? Little Timmy wants to go to college, get away from him drug dealers!
@Lotsofgoats Discord is a great system and getting better every week, I’d definitely be on board with hanging out with some fellow mehmbers on Discord, it certainly holds more appeal for me than dragging the dinosaur that is IRC out of retirement in 2016 and has many many many features IRC does not have with a feature set that’s growing constantly. The best argument for it over Slack would be that it is completely open, no email address required for people so inclined to keep their info private. Slack does have some really nice features that Discord lacks but, Discord is coming into its own and seems set to square off solidly against Slack, Skype, Teamspeak, Mumble, and Ventrillo.
@jbartus yep, discord is a legitimately good platform and I’ve been impressed at how often they update and how receptive they are to suggestions
@Lotsofgoats @drunkcat @jbartus I’m on IRC every day FOR work (best way to get support as a developer). In fact, I’m so dependent on it I semi recently set up my own bouncer to proxy my connection.
If your going to go to a new chat service, IMHO slack is cool - but I don’t think I could handle a meh slack.
@Lotsofgoats yeah I’m consistently impressed with everything they’re doing. Their corporate culture (can you call it that when they aren’t making money yet?) is really interesting to observe from the outside.
@MrGlass All of what you say is true, but it’s not the best place because it’s user friendly or powerful, it’s the best place because getting a free IRC channel on some host is free, most developer types have at least a passing familiarity with it, and it keeps the ignorant general population out by imposing a confounding and archaic interface. In short, it’s not used because of how good it is for building a community around, it’s used because it’s the free thing that most people that support people want to be bothered with dealing with can figure out.
IRC was great back in the day when everybody who used computers had regular interactions with command line, your average computer user today is baffled by the very concept of the cut down version of DOS that is command prompt, IRC is just baffling to them. There’s really no good argument for using IRC other than the fact that it’s free and some people are still used to it despite a myriad of superior offerings on the market. IRC was great in 1988 but it hasn’t been meaningfully updated in well over a decade.
@jbartus IRC is a protocol. Its not a client, platform, or company. Its closest equivalent is probably HTTP or FTP.
IRC is not a client, service, company, or anything like that. Its an international standard for how to transmit chat messages.
There are a lot of IRC clients out there, and many have archaic interfaces (from what you said, it sounds like you used IRSSI?). Plenty of others, though, are easy to use & have all the features of modern chat apps - tabs, emoji, embedded images or even video. In fact, I can’t think of a multiplatform IM or chat client that doesn’t support IRC.
There are many reasons not to use IRC. The biggest impairment to adoption is probably the need for a user to get and setup a client (instead of just opening a page in their browser). I think, however, that the recent shit further away from IRC is not from UX problems, but general business/ecosystem shifts.
Moxie Marlinspike is the hacker/developer behind signal, the encryption tech the powers the full encryption available in a bunch of these new chat services including whatsapp, googles new chat allo, and signal. He recently published a blog post about the entire software ecosystem moving away from open protocols like IRC. He goes into the reasons these old systems go stale, the problems with making a new open protocol, and ultimately why he thinks that his chat system will never be federated like IRC, email, http, etc. Its well worth a read if your interested in these trends.
@MrGlass I am well aware of what IRC is, as you say a more precise term would be to refer to it as IRCP but… I’m not out to reinvent the wheel so we’ll just keep with calling it IRC like people have for ages.
As far as clients, I’ve used all manner of clients over the years including mIRC which I believe you specifically called out earlier (or was that @DrunkCat?) and while some are quite a bit more modern than others I have yet to see one that truly places the user experience for non-technical people as the number one priority. Every single client I’ve seen for IRC is deficient in one area or another, largely stemming from developers starting with a goal of resolving a pet issue while leaving things alone that they didn’t mind but that aren’t especially user friendly.
Multiplatform offerings like Pidgin or Trillian suffer from similar issues though different in cause, namely that they seek to be multitools and therefore develop to the least common denominator in terms of feature support. Many functions that are present in one chat system won’t get picked up in these multiplatform offerings because there’s a limited scope with the feature only benefiting a fraction of their users. Mind, this was all an issue even before Skype’s API was shut down forcing people to run multiple apps if they wanted to use Skype as well as other chat systems.
As for your last, the UX problems are a manifestation of the issues discussed in the article you linked. When you own something you can pretty much do what you want with it, when you’re using an open standard you’re subject to the whims of everybody else using that standard if you want to implement something new. Those bits about extensible federation apply as much to IRC as they do to XMPP, those modern clients with support for all of these things don’t represent a consistent user experience between all users.
For example, someone might post a piece of ASCII art in an older fixed-width IRC client and everybody else in the chat will miss the joke they were trying to make because they’re all using more modern clients with variable width fonts. A new user might need to adjust some setting that’s handled via command in the client the person helping them is using but is buried in four layers of menu on their client because it’s an uncommon setting and because they’re on mismatched clients they aren’t able to get the help they need. Consistency of experience is important to building up a community, it’s a big part of why even when the Skype API was exposed people were so reluctant to switch to things like Trillian or Pidgin, the inconsistency of features was killer, nobody wants to be left out of the joke that everybody else is laughing at.
If the protocol were evolving with standardization of new more-modern features it would be seeing more use, but because it’s federated making such a global change is effectively impossible.