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Logging IRC  (View post)

Richard Dunlop-Walters [PersonRank 1]

Sunday, February 13, 2005
19 years ago

It would be pretty hard to log IRC. There are hundreds of thousands of different channels on many different networks. Even if they had the resources to have some sort of spider present in all these channels, the logfiles would be massive and extremely hard to maintain.

Is there even any talk of Google logging IRC, or is it jjust speculation?

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

19 years ago #

There were once rumors of Google spidering IRC, like here ...

http://manero.org/weblog/archives/000133.html

... but I haven't seen anything surface yet.

Richard Dunlop-Walters [PersonRank 1]

19 years ago #

Interesting though that sounds, it jsut doesn't sound feasable.

Logging MOTDs, users, links, perhaps. Though how IRC Ops will react to that, who knows. From the sounds of it, they are joining channels, colecting data and leaving. In most cases that'll probably be fine, bu there are countless channels that discourage idling, and constant joining and parting.

Logging IRC, as far as I can see would be impossible. Again, because of the subject of idling, and because I can't see Google placing a spider in every, or even very many, IRC channels.

It will be interesting to se eif anything comes of it, and if so, how they achieve it.

Sorry for going on.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

19 years ago #

As for idling, they could just let their bot say something every few minutes... he might also simply perform Google searches when you say e.g. "Google apple store". Yes, there are privacy issues. Possibly there'd be a "you can only search for 1 week in channels which allow us in".

I agree it might be next to impossible to even store all the information, then again, I find it equally impossbile to perform a full text search on 8 billion pages and find all hits, and rank them, in 0.05 seconds! Sometimes Google does the magic. If they'd limit themselves to only some days of storage (they also don't store the web permanently, like Archive.org does), it might be feasible.

The privacy issues might actually be the bigger hurdle here... is a chat room private or not? Interesting question. I mean anybody in the channel at that time may quote you later on. Also, log files are sometimes put on the server, and quotes are often pulled automatically. Check FindForward's Chat search option to see how easy it is to dig up those:
http://www.findforward.com/?q=&t=chat

Richard Dunlop-Walters [PersonRank 1]

19 years ago #

I think privacy is (going to be) the biggest hurdle. Though IRC channels are, for the most part, totally open to public access, I think a lot of people would be concerned about what was being logged – I regular on quite a few myself, and I know I would be – the only logging a few days seems like an interesting idea, and would probably ease the minds of a lot of people.

But what puts the most doubt in my mind is the thought of exactly how they'd do it. Putting a "Google Bot" in every IRC channel, or even every major IRC channel, would be no easy task.

But I'm just repeating myself again now, so I'll leave it at that. It wil certainly be interesting, and I'll be keeping my ears open for news about this.

I use FindForward a lot, I've found it quite useful on a few occasions.

(By the way, do this website have an IRC channel?)

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

19 years ago #

I suggest #google over at Undernet! Any objections? I know that room isn't very full mostly.

Richard Dunlop-Walters [PersonRank 1]

19 years ago #

That channel requires a key. Any idea what it is?

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

19 years ago #

No. OK, let's take #blogoscoped.

Manic [PersonRank 1]

19 years ago #

Spidering IRC is probably a more accurate term for anything Google might do on IRC than what "logging" is. I can't imagine anyone even making an attempt at keeping running logs of all channels on all networks. It would be more likely to see them tracking things like when a channel was created, and frequently spidering channels for topic changes and userlists, etc.. There are already several websites that do some of this, searchirc.com for example.

Nicole Simon [PersonRank 1]

19 years ago #

I suggest freenode. joiito and some others are there. I hate using different servers for different rooms. :o)

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