Author doesn&#x27;t grok IRC. By &#x2F;definition&#x2F; IRC is &#x27;mostly idling&#x27; on most open source channel. It can be bursty, but most of the time you come to the channel once a day to read the log, or send a couple of question that you might get an answer to when someone wakes up.<p>If there is more traffic than this, it&#x27;s unmanageable for development purpose; but it would also apply to many other chat systems anyway.<p>It&#x27;s still a LOT better than skype chat and all the other &#x27;answer me NOW&#x27; systems