irc is still the only way to meet "the guy on the street" online. that's mainly why it still survives, despite its quirks. i don't know what you mean by "good"

irc is still the only way to meet "the guy on the street" online. that's mainly why it still survives, despite its quirks. i don't know what you mean by "good" server/channels, but let me say this: back when irc was _the_ chatting medium, all the low-iq trolls that today are on the web were on irc. so the channels were ruled by a very strict dictatorship. you needed to be very lucky (or meet with real-world friends) to have a decent chat. now that the trolls and other offenders largely moved out to the http space, i think irc has gotten its "underground" status back. this means you'll most probably find whatever you're after inside large networks. for example, if you want to know a quick fact about norway, go to #norway in undernet and shoot. somebody will reply. you need a python tip, #python in freenode is where some python gurus hang out. i personally admire freenode for having managed to establish the "showing op status is not polite" netiquette. you can see channels with hundreds of users where not one op has shown up for ages. that was not easy to imagine not so long ago :)