A Moogle  🏳️‍🌈 💻 🎮 🎶 🇸🇪

I'm not going to lie: I really would adore seeing a new generation of the IRC protocol. Maybe I'm weird. Actually, I know I'm weird. But I have more positive and longer-lasting memories of time spent on IRC even into the 2000's than any other chat program.

what would you add to IRC, theoretically speaking? I feel like anything that takes it away from text-through-a-socket would be straying from the point, but I'm interested to hear your thoughts.

This is an admittedly naïve take, but things like embedding images, watchable YouTube links, and other things could conceivably be done with the existing protocol, if only clients implemented a boilerplate level of parsing links posted by other people.

But in terms of actual protocol revisions: As I see it, something like the ability to edit sent messages is something that could be done without breaking the existing API contract.

Again, a naïve take, but it should be possible for a packet to specify an edit to a message using a hash of the initial message - which has been indelibly sent - and the delta to apply over it.

While this does mean that the original message is still there in the history, and it would be up to clients to opt in and implement support for such packets, is there any practical difference from Discord, Slack, Telegram or others showing the new message with an "(edited)" note?

If anything, such functionality being opt-in would be *more* transparent, not less, than other popular protocols. You know that the message was edited, but you don't know what it said after the fact. Indelibly knowing the original content encourages accountability.

If there were any uptake for an updated protocol at all, situations could not exist where you can say "You are a total motherfucker :)" and then edit it to say "Have a great day! :)", and the receiving party would be at a disadvantage if they only screenshot it after the fact.