Hello again fellow minecraftians,

Today I shall be writing this blog on the subject of: IRC (Internet Relay Chat) Vs. Ajax Chat (PMC's current Chat).

Now let's begin with explaining for those who do not know what IRC is:

Quoting from Wikipedia:
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a protocol for real-time Internet text messaging (Chat) or synchronous conferencing. It is mainly designed for group communication in discussion forums, called channels but also allows one-to-one communication via private message as well as group chat.

So now that IRC has been explained... lets look at the pros and cons of each chat.

IRC Chat

Pros:

• Lag free
  
• Allows multiple options for channel owners and chatters (can be made invite only, limited amount of users, etc)
  
• Allows the creation of new channels (if you have a faction etc, you can use this when your server may be down or when you do not wish to play minecraft)
  
• Can be coded
  
• Allows for multiple different op levels (Owner,Full op,Half-op)
  
• If you own an IRC server there are multiple other options for server admins, server operators, server bots, etc.
  
• Can be accessed by Iphone/Ipad, Android phones and tablet pcs.
  
• Easily moderated without any extra coding/effort
  
• Allows for quick channel lockdown (mutes everyone except mods if there is a spam attack)
  

Cons:

• Is susceptible to botnets (if the IRC server has no protection against this)
  
• Can be spammed (Easy to script a spam preventer into a bot)
  
• has no icons (is a pro in my opinion but con in others)
  
• Does not have noise when someone posts a message (If you are using a client it may be different)
  

Ajax Chat

Pros:

• Allows icons (personally is a con for me)
  
• easily integrated into a website. (Coding is easy to add)
  
• Allows for easy moderating (When there's no lag)
  
• Allows for text deletion for users own posts and for moderators to delete any post (very handy when servers are posted in the wrong place and spam etc)
  
• Can be accessed via Iphone/Ipad and can be used on android phones if using the web browser
  

Cons:

• Extremely Laggy! (maybe sourced in a seperate Domain to counter the bandwidth usage of the main site?)
  
• Has icons (personal con for me) (remove the icons?)
  
• Can be hacked (Look into prevention coding for it?)
  

Can't think of many cons for this one but if you have any post a reply and I'll see if its viable to add to the list, same goes for IRC.

Comment on which Chat you would prefer to use and lets see what the opinions are, I will keep a score of what people think on here.

For IRC: 7
For Ajax: 1