What is lily? How is it different than other chat or instant messaging (IM) systems?

Sure, there are technical differences, but the biggest differences are social. Most systems have their fundamental social unit a channel or discussion and all social activity takes place in that discussion. Lily itself is the social unit, and the discussions form sub-communities within the parent community.

Lets explore this in various other systems.

With IRC, most networks are organized on a grand scale, so there is little sense of community for actually being on an IRC network. Instead, channels will develop, and there will be personalities and a community organized around that channel. While there is some crossover between discussions, there is generally little shared community.

Instant Messaging (e.g. AIM, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Chat) has little sense of community at all, since most communication is between individuals and not in well defined discussions.

MUDs, however, tend to have the same sense of community as lily does. Their difference is that the community is mostly oriented around some role-playing scenario instead of a generalized community.

There seem to be an increasing number of CMCs (for example, Friendster) that are trying to build around relationships. They are falling short because thats the only thing they are built on - that somehow knowing someone else magically means you have a connection to them.

Lily shares components from all of these, of course, but founds its community on something different. Historically this foundation was some connection to RPI, but since then it has turned into a network of people and their friends (to get an understanding of just some of these relationships, see Coke's Lily Links applet or Coke's Lily Nexus). This has a technical bent, of course, but is not exclusively technical. Since there is a broad diversity of interests, we seem to have built a collection of people with different interests and perspectives.

We reflect these different interests and perspectives in the discussions we create. Since discussions themselves are not the community, they tend to be more carefully focused around specific topics. Thats not to say that there aren't discussions that are purely social, but even these live in the context of a broader community.

In many ways, this parallels realspace: in a town, people may not all know each other, but many will and there will be some sort of commonality between them. There may be places in town that have specific topical discussions (for example, the local computer store or library) and others that are social (for example, someones living room or a fraternal organization).

Like most communities in realspace, the personalities and actions don't always work well together. Lily has had its share of people who seem to rub everyone the wrong way. Although the system itself has methods to help control this (for example, the /ignore command, and a server enforced permission system on discussions), the "problem" persists, and many people are frustrated with why. I suspect a large part is that people don't understand that those causing "the problems" honestly don't care what most people think. They will use an abrasive and sometimes downright rude or crass style as part of getting their message across, and if you listen, so much the better. If you tune them out - they honestly don't care.

Consider the (slightly contrived) realspace analogy of a person who is full of tattoos and body piercings. The image they portray will likely drive people away - but it is just an image. The person may have a lot useful to say, but really don't care if you walk away from them because of something unrelated to the message itself.
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