> When I first looked for something to let me be "always on" I ran into the same advice you're giving. It didn't help me at all. Most people looking for the answer to "how can I have always-on IRC with a backlog" don't want to learn about what a BNC is or the pros and cons of the various BNC solutions out there, they want something actionable.
This is a really strange comment. If the question is "How do I get always-on IRC" then the answer is "Use a bouncer". Following up with "People don't want to learn about a bouncer" is the same thing as "People don't really want the answer". I'm confused.
How is "Install ZNC" (as an example of a bouncer) not "actionable"?
The double-edged sword of bouncers is that they try to strap the behavior we're looking for on top of IRC which forces them to do it in a convoluted way.
Connecting to multiple networks with a bouncer has always felt like a kludgey disaster to me because of this. I don't want to have to define another connection from each of my actual clients to my bouncer to add another network, I just want to add another network. When I get a new system or reinstall an old one I don't want to have to set up a half dozen connections.
Quassel gets this right and keeps things separated. All IRC network settings exist at the server (bouncer) only, the client needs nothing more than a username and a password for the server and gets everything else from there.
Installing a bouncer means following technical documentation and having a server free. The first requirement kills the interest of people who want a single app install. The second kills the interest of people who want the service free and run by a third party.
These are not enormous barriers but they were enough to put me off of setting up Quassel on a VPS for a few years. Now that I've done it I don't want to go back, of course, and I don't see it as a huge chore to do it again. But that's what's making it "not actionable" - the perception that this is going to end in a nightmare of configuration files and Stack Overflow searches.
That's part of the reason why "Quassel as a service" would be a very powerful tool.
Currently, though, we have to tell users who want that to use IRCCloud instead - about half of the people come back after the first week of free usage of IRCCloud when it asks you to pay, and start using Quassel from then on.
This is a really strange comment. If the question is "How do I get always-on IRC" then the answer is "Use a bouncer". Following up with "People don't want to learn about a bouncer" is the same thing as "People don't really want the answer". I'm confused.
How is "Install ZNC" (as an example of a bouncer) not "actionable"?