This works on Slack but only with their client. Use one of the bridges and you have no clue what's going on and they have a centralised system for this. Syncing that somehow across all servers in an IRC network, across netsplits and everything, is far from simple. You'd also need to do this retroactively somehow if a client received a message, disconnects, the message is updated and the client then reconnects, in order to present an accurate history.
> or a common way to have plugins/extensions
IRC already has a way to allow for extensions. Or do you mean client side?
> or tagging links as images
I'm not sure the IRC protocol should care about that at all. It's more up to the client to detect image links and Glowing Bear for example already does and can display them inline.
Yes, it's not simple. But it's not impossible to do. And yes, it might not work in 100% of cases, after netsplits, but so what?
You said you agreed on A
No I edited it later to say that I meant I was in favour of B
Oh, I never saw that edit...
Who speaks about magic?
Just send a message with the original ID and make the difference. Mark it in the UI, and redisplay it.
Also, edits would ruin many of the funny situations encountered on bash.org. :)
It wouldn't have to be complex, either, and it certainly isn't useless (says me and a few other people already!).
Quick example: I recently typed out about 10 long lines of business development chatter in Slack, the first of which contained a list of prospects. I realized I left a few out in my list, and edited the message to add them in. Without editing, I'd have to have either posted the complete list again or added them in as a second comment. Editing the original message is simply a lot less confusing.
With editing if people read the first version of your opening message, you don't know if they saw the edits or not.
I find edits useful for typos/formatting/cosmetics, but I don't ever edit significant information into a previous post for that reason.
I'm not sure why your comment was down voted, but as both an IRC and Slack user, I have to say I love Slack's built in pastebin.
I do wonder though, should IRC evolve to be like Slack or should it evolve idependently? I feel that the new features should be more vital, rather than "neat"... like maybe more focus on privacy and/or anonymity. Undoubtedly, I am just resisting change...
I see chat like in-person communication where editing something already said is impossible.
Once you try it, you never want to go back.
Maybe also backport some features of Slack, like edition of messages (with a flag marking it as edited), or a common way to have plugins/extensions, or tagging links as images.