Because I prefer online conversations to work like IRL ones: Ephemeral. Sure each individual might keep their own log if they want but the server itself doesn’t and setting aside all the issues with modern datasets being used for training all sorts of algorithms, just the concept of stepping into a digital room without all the baggage of the last twenty hours of conversation is _mentally refreshing_. It also changes people’s behaviour for the better IME.

Saving logs is gross, chats should be ephemeral. In any case there's HistServ and IRCv3 /chathistory nowadays, so if you really want it you can have it.

That all the minute garbage everyone posts is preserved forever in an unfiltered state I think is a root cause of the mental degradation that results from using Discord: kids don't have anywhere to 'post into the void' anymore. Preserving past events and relationships through oral history as opposed to a big monolithic search engine entails a far more human element to IRC.

You are correct. I used Discord terminology where a "server" is a group of channels.

But are they solved? In a single combined client.

Otherwise it's not really an alternative. It does not matter if it's technically a protocol. Users don't care about if it's a protocol, IRC clients had over 10 years to catch up.

What a uselessly pedantic response.

Are they solved, in practice, in the real world? For users in general? No? Then what's the point of discussing it right now?

IRC for main chat, Mumble for voice chat when gaming. Been solid for decades. I have at least 3 functional Mumble servers saved (including my own) in my client, most of them are associated with an IRC community. I occasionally hear "Anyone down for some Quake? Hop on Mumble." or something to that effect. Mumble is pretty easy to host, so if you're using it with a small to medium group of friends, I'd say just throw up a server on your LAN somewhere. It's got decent mobile clients on F-Droid as well if you need one.