The network certainly has something to do with it. EFNet seems to be full of trolls and is hard to have a legitimate conversation in, while much of Freenode is

The network certainly has something to do with it. EFNet seems to be full of trolls and is hard to have a legitimate conversation in, while much of Freenode is so focused that it’s hard to have a natural conversation without being berated for being off-topic. Snoonet seems to strike a reasonable medium and has the nicest people I’ve met out of any IRC network.