Thoughts
IRC is funny. I think it's in an Eternal September phase, where it's used by people that are desperate for software support, and senior devs.
I set up the The Lounge a little bit ago, which is an IRC client server, it connects to IRC servers for you and store messages, so that you get a traceback like a modern app. This is legitimately one of my problems with IRC. I don't want to have to leave an IRC client open, I don't use IRC at all. I just want to pop in and check it everyone once in a while.