h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi Mark!

You might wanna mention pIRCh as well. It can be found at http://www.pirchat.com

Fessie/Festi(val)

Never could get the hang of PIRCH. It looked neat, but the interface seemed more complicated than MIRC. With MIRC, everything was simple to run and the scripts were easier to load.

Well, for me it was the other way around, actually.
I first worked with MIRC for one day, and then was introduced to Pirch. I found Pirch more intuitive to use, and deserted Mirc immediately.

As far as scripts are concerned: With Mirc some things couldn't be done without them. However with Pirch I never felt the NEED for any scripts. When I first had Mirc, they were at version 4.5 or something like that, and automatically sending/recieving sound-files was NOT possible without some heavy script. With Pirch this feature was then already built-in. And this is only ONE example

Anyway: when making a list of the most widely used IRC-clients, we can't just describe only the clients that we like ourselves. We should objectively mention others as well. Just for the sake of this "complete and objective information" I suggested adding Pirch to the list.

And honestly, I hate IRC-clients which, because of lacking potential, almost FORCE the user to load any scripts, because those scripts are mostly made up of the same things all the time. All the scripts I've seen in action, contain only:
1. A lot of pictures, which is fun for a while, but becomes irritating if they start to interfere with normal conversation, because of some juvenile who can't think of anything else to do than only running those popups.
2. Some irritating routines that count all kind of events like: how many people have been kicked out of a channel. Again: fun for an hour or so, but after that it becomes quite irritating to see the same thing pop up every time. Especially, if half the populace of a channel runs that script and none of them knows how to deactivate it.
3. A lot of WAR-like tools which make the children even more aggresive than they already are by themselves.

Really useful things are seldom found in those scripts. They interfere with a normal pleasant conversation, and that conversation is exactly why I join IRC in the first place.

At a certain moment, I created my own channel, and you'd be surprised to hear that MOST of my visiters used Pirch just because they felt the same way as I did. They came for an amusing CHAT, not for seeing a load of sh*t. In general, without the wish to offend anyone, I'd say that the Pirch-users seemed more mature than the Mirc-users.

Most Mirc-users just left, because they found *my* channel boring, whereas I *created* it to avoid the channels where *I* got bored.
Pirch-users liked my channel exactly for the reason I created it.
Weird huh?

Well that is true that a lot of kids will mis-use MIRC scripts and cause problems. That is one reason I always preferred private rooms set up by someone so that any trouble maker could be excluded it the room could just enjoy chatting itself. I will admit though that I have caused problems by not understanding a new script and accidently flood the channel with garbage. Oops.

I haven't tried many other IRC clients. For a while I used the Microsoft V-chat software with their V-chat servers. The graphical interface was nice. There were so many limitations on it though that I tended to used both MIRC and v-chat at the same time, but had to split the screen.

Ah yeah, split the screen... don't you hate that? If you want to log in twice, you MUST start mirc twice. With pirch I only had to start the application once, and within that one application I could log on as many times as the server allowed.

Private or self-made rooms were cool, although I tried *not* to use my power to ban or kick people. I tended to create an atmosphere in which the abusers just didn't feel at home. I'd rather see them go by their own choice, 'cos that made sure they wouldn't try to come back. If you ever kick or ban someone, you can wait for them to try and get in again, forcing you to take special precautions to discourage them...

Now that's all behind me. I've sworn never to go back to IRC again, it just isn't as much fun as H2G2