It&#x27;s awkward that the author describes openstack, which is one of the few projects I am aware of that actually schedules meetings on IRC for discussions and debates (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.openstack.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Meetings" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.openstack.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Meetings</a>), quite literally to resolve issues where IRC doesn&#x27;t work for them. Compare this to other projects&#x2F;channel communities like #mysql, #postgres and #clojure where this doesn&#x27;t happen, and all communications are ad-hoc.<p>I agree with some of the other people that the author doesn&#x27;t grok IRC. It doesn&#x27;t force you to be instantly available, just available <i>eventually</i>. The amount of effort it takes me to respond to a question I know in IRC is an order of magnitude less than an email, and email lists with a lot of mindless chatter can just be as insular or more insular than IRC groups.<p>If the author has issue with individuals getting constant highlights then they should redress them to communicate with the community as a whole. The appropriate interaction on IRC starts off with asking the channel&#x2F;community as a whole a question (much like the mailing list described). It feels like openstack has a lot of newer people that don&#x27;t really understand the expected etiquette&#x2F;workflow on IRC.