> Last but not least, an IRC server/channel in lieu of discord? I'm stuck in my ways!
IRC is nice for people who use it, but it has a huuuuge barrier to entry for new users. The very first thing you have to do is choose a client out of a list of 100 clients, half of which haven't been maintained since 2003. Then you need to set up a bouncer somewhere so that you can see messages that were posted when you were away. Those two things will filter out 99.99% of new people.
Or, you could use Discord (or Matrix); people sign up for an account and that's it.
Our open-source project switched from IRC to Matrix (after having been on IRC for over a decade before that), and got a noticeable uptick in engagement.
Unfortunately, Matrix still has some long-standing UI quirks, which would make me reluctant to use it in a context where I want people to pay me money; particularly if some of those are non-technical users.
3. Discover you can't join a lot of channels because you're not registered; or worse, that your messages sent to the channel are silently discarded
And you still have the problem that if you're in the wrong time zone and happen to close the window, you may miss responses.
There are advantages to having high barriers to entry for a community; Ham radio is essentially a global chat room with an entrance exam, for instance. But there are costs too.
Your point 3. is true generally, but - as I understand - parent wanted to operate a customer support channel and dismissed IRC. In this case: just don't lock your channel for Guests.
Timezones affect other platforms, but an IRC bot might help customers when admins sleep.
But I'm not sure IRC is best for this use case (e.g. forums, wiki are probably better), but "high barrier of entry" is arguable.
Another option is a community hosted Mattermost (it's like Discord/Slack/IRC). It's pretty easy to run, all the chat are in PostgreSQL so it's "easy" to produce archive logs (like IRC has). Or do any other magic.
IRC <3 Still daily driving it with some friends. I wouldn’t be surprised if my Discord chat history was unavailable in a decade, so IRC is a nice option to run on the side. There’s value in simplicity, and I admit the risk of sounding like a tech hipster.
IRC has no chat history either, right. I get the simplicity of IRC but searchable history is a bonus for Discord. As long as the service is available, searching is kinda possible. With irc you have to find out which bot provides history, which is then usually split over multiple files
My client dies the logging, and I can e.g. grep decade old logs. I’m not sure if you can get same level of access to Discord logs (=export them). I guess Discord bot that logs everything as a historian is a partial solution (I guess log bot cannot catch DMs).
Also see https://oftc.net/, where a bunch of older-school development projects hang out. (That's where the Xen Project moved to after freenode imploded, before eventually switching to Matrix.)
I remember back in the day I wouldn't even check the listings, just joining whatever #topic or #hobby or #software and finding it filled with people almost always.
Right, I can go to insert mode, but to leave is, tricky. I found going to replace mode and escape worked in FF. I'm sure its a browser issue, I also have vimium so probably a nightmare of hooks!
Have you tried with <Control-Left Square Bracket>? aka Ctrl-[, or ^[, as seen sometimes in the terminal. This works for me in most terminals as an alternative to Escape when using vi/vim.
In mobile (at least in mine, firefox) the input become buferred autocomplete and when accepted via return, the typed word gets duplicated before entered. Workaround is to accept via space and delete as necessary
What are the use cases you Invision?
Last but not least, an IRC server/channel in lieu of discord? I'm stuck in my ways!
Nice work too, I hope this doesn't come across as flippant.
EDIT: Side note, I opened vi and escape is.. well maybe a browser issue but 'cant exit vi' .. Never thought id say that again