@neil would join!

@neil
There's a channel I still hang out in, mostly the same bunch of folks from a messageboard from the early aughts. It's really nice!
Not sure how one would go about finding an IRC community now, though.

@neil What about https://ircv3.net/

@neil my raspberryPi fell over and I can't ssh into it, so I have to wait until I'm back in the UK to have IRC access (yes I know there's other ways to IRC, but I like my ssh+screen+irssi combo)

@neil hey I'm not gonna talk you out of it.

@neil You could spin it as a piece of performance art, meant to expose the fallacies of the Online Safety Act. See how far that gets you!

On the practical side: having the server center on community rather than tech might be a bit of a struggle. An IRC server is likely to attract people who are into IRC. The medium is once again the message...

@neil set the MOTD to call it "Email"…that's exempt, right? 😛

@neil I still have a screen session running irssi connected to an IRC server I once helped sysadmin. I SSH in less than once a year though...

@neil why not Matrix?

@neil Just use libera chat?

@neil yeah I too am frustrated by the UX. It's a classic case of "designed for the nerds who wrote it" unfortunately. I just figured it'd be easier to join an existing Matrix chat than to spin up a whole new IRC server.

@neil Fair, I guess it depends who you're wanting to talk to.

@neil I hang in a few retro computing IRC channels - but only because I bridge them into my Matrix server so they're like any other Matrix/Signal/Meta chat in my clients.

I definitely understand the feeling. It's a form of hanging out that I really enjoy.

(I run my own private Matrix channel for friends into hw/fw cybersec stuff too and I'd say it's the same feeling as IRC though)

@neil heh yeah I was missing it too and hopped back on again, just in the last few weeks.
Seems and feels an awful lot quieter than when I last used it.

@neil Same, and to a lesser extent AIM and MSN. I used to talk to people I would have zero likelihood of meeting in person, even got an internship through it.

Most channels seem very quiet now, though Debian still does a lot of organising there.

@neil the best thing was it was here and now. If you weren't logged in when something was said, you didn't know, no FOMO, everyone just accepted that was how it was.

@neil If you started a channel on libera I'd be delighted to join it

@neil Sounds like someone needs to write an IRC interface to an “email service”. IRC over SMTP!!

@neil if you do, have a look at ergo ircd. Supports IRCv3 and isn’t awful to manage unlike many of the traditional options.