Posted by Strider on 9/25/2009, 7:22 pm, in reply to "Re: Why I'm Starting To Dislike The Internet"
I'm kind of in a hurry and I've been meaning to write up a longer post about this, but with all due respect, I think you're being unduly paranoid about everything and moving to IRC entirely is a bad idea.
From a philosophical standpoint- it's very hard to tell what 'tone' someone is using online, and even if one is otherwise inclined to stop and say to themselves 'wait, did they really mean that?' before they go off on a tirade, the immediate-ness and pace of IRC makes it that much harder to do so. I think this is one of the reasons that IRC channels tend to devolve into petty drama so frequently- not only does nobody understand each other, they don't even realize it. Essentially, IRC takes all the bad things about online interactions and makes them worse.
From a pragmatic point of view- if you are, now or in the future, trying to build a community around your games, the impermanance of IRC may become a liability... It makes it difficult for people to learn what's happened in the past, and hides interactions from anyone who's not willing to log into IRC. Of course, to some extent, you can use the GGZ or other forums for this purpose, but still- it's something to consider.
- HC
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