Those are all good points (hell, I've been using IRC for nearly 17 years and I still don't know what half those flags mean). I think it's the first time I've s

Those are all good points (hell, I've been using IRC for nearly 17 years and I still don't know what half those flags mean). I think it's the first time I've seen a good argument about not using IRC! I still think it'd be fairly easy to set up a company-internal server and make the whole process pretty streamlined for users. The only somewhat difficult part, then, would be the password. And I'm not sure how valuable message persistence really is, anyway, especially when you have your company email directory (and you could have IRC logs). And for the record, I don't claim IRC's UX is without it's problems. It could certainly be improved a lot. I just don't think it's bad enough that people can't be expected to figure out how to log on and start chatting. At the same time, I think switching to a proprietary service that's run offsite is not a good solution. (We use XMPP where I work, but strangely not with conferencing. It works very well, but we're forced to use a shitty client (Cisco Jabber)). I've got high hopes that IRCv3 can start making improvements on a lot of the things you mentioned, but only time will tell.