Disagree. As an open chat platform -- ie. not for private/confidential communications, to me, IRC is still superior to Matrix. We use it at work in parallel to IRC, and it still happens today (at least with elements.io) that a message or two can get lost when you restart your client in an unfortunate moment, and sometimes channel user lists get out of sync, so you're addressing a person that's not there, or suddenly someone replies you don't see in the user list. It's happening rarely, but it does, and it is annoying.

IRC's concept of requiring an active TCP connection for your session is archaic but dead simple, and the only times you have to wonder whether or not someone received your message is if they got a ping timeout shortly after, and the user list might get out of sync once in a honeymoon when there's a net-split. Nothing about IRC changes anymore, so you won't get surprised by regressions and bug fixes every month. I can see how people miss long multi-line messages and animated gifs in IRC, but I just don't. It's straight forward text communications, no bullshit.

> and it still happens today (at least with elements.io) that a message or two can get lost when you restart your client in an unfortunate moment

Is that unlucky moment during Element sending/trying to send the message to the server?

In this case Element stores messages now until they are sent (since 1.7.26).

Otherwise, don't see how this could happen.

I genuinely don't understand how you are concerned about "losing messages" when that is literally the baseline for IRC. Every person needs their own bouncer if they don't want any message to be lost to them when their machine disconnects from the internet. And if your bouncer loses connection you won't get the messages either.

IRC doesn't lose messages. Everyone you see in the channel gets the message, everybody else doesn't. No guessing games. That's what gp meant.

Should be the same for Matrix really, if your client manages to send it to the server.

> I also love url and picture previews displayed directly in Element (and other clients) by way of synapse - far nicer experience than the text-only of IRC in my opinion.

What is the difference with IRC clients showing URL/picture in terms of experience?

How does one moderate a room if there are infinite home servers with infinite identities?

I agree Matrix hasn't seen the level of attacks IRC got. Once it has been through that we will see if it is really a viable alternative.

You can block users or homeservers, or even go allowlist only, I believe.

I think there's work on some sort of reputation based system but afaik it's not there yet.