Forum:IRC

Hello, good people of the Wiki!

I come here today to propose to you... IRC!

Essentially, IRC(Internet Relay Chat) is a program to allow for easy conversation between multiple individuals who can log into the program through a variety of clients designed for such.

But Jimcloud, why should we get IRC?

Well, you see, IRC is designed for people to chat! Over on the Final Fantasy Wiki, we use our IRC channel for anything from policy discussions to talking about FF games to talking about Homestuck to whatever various inane thing happens to cross our minds next. It's very nice for casual conversation that would clutter talk pages, and for a form of real-time conversation you don't really get on a Wiki.

But Jimcloud, what about Pesterchum/Wikia Chat?/???

Well, those are options too, but for this specific purpose, IRC is superior. I'll provide examples for the two specific other IRC options listed.

Pesterchum (which is actually a specialized type of IRC in and of itself) is great for peer to peer conversations, but it's not designed for conversations between multiple users. Yes, it has memo capabilities, but having a capability is not the same as being its specialty, and more general IRC excels in conversation between multiple individuals while still possessing the capability for PM conversations. There's less legwork involved in setting up a channel than there is a memo, and once a channel is set up properly you can count on it still being there.

Wikia Chat is also an option, but it's generally inferior to IRC being Wikia because it lacks formatting capabilities and requires a Captcha to be used every time you log in, which, while preserving that authentic MSPA feel, isn't really conducive to convenient IRCing.

The specifics can be figured out once we decide if we're using IRC at all or what, but I would personally recommend the freenode network, since that's where Wikia themselves set up their own IRC channel, but that's still up to you guys. What do folks think? 15:39, April 15, 2012 (UTC)