More numbers doesn't necessarily mean that it's more accessible though. I'm not trying to say that IRC is the most user friendly or accessible and I have no dou

More numbers doesn't necessarily mean that it's more accessible though. I'm not trying to say that IRC is the most user friendly or accessible and I have no doubts Matrix wins on this front, but consider that the IRC server was just sitting there for years not getting that much attention, I only learned of its existence through Rust for instance. The switch to Matrix caused huge amounts of advertising for both the IRC server and the upcoming replacement and I saw articles and discussions on this way outside the normal Rust/Firefox/Mozilla circles, and it didn't just come at once either, as once Mozilla decided on Matrix as a replacement there was another set of articles hitting the rounds. P.S. that post mentions internal engineering/ops teams switching from Slack to Matrix, that'd boost Matrix numbers if they weren't using IRC already. Perhaps that's an accessibility issue if Matrix was offering features that Slack had and IRC was missing.