Although I agree with you, as others have pointed out you're selling IRC short for certain use cases. Language or domain specific channels are great for getting

Although I agree with you, as others have pointed out you're selling IRC short for certain use cases. Language or domain specific channels are great for getting rapid responses to well thought out queries. > To me, IRC has always been a "grapevine" tool, where etiquette, social pecking orders and gossip are shared amongst a smallish close-knit social circle. IRC always feels more like a social scene, and a distraction. This is certainly a problem is many IRC channels, but I have no idea what to do about it. One thing that is annoying is watching interesting conversation get disintegrated by the regulars taking over to talk about banal everyday topics like what they're currently eating or just ate, etc. If you hang out in any room for long enough you're likely to experience the "I've been here since..." pissing contest. IRC is still massively useful though. Don't sell it so short. Edit: I forgot to mention that IRC is also a base for lots of open source project collaboration. Look at the mozilla irc network for an example. Getting rapid responses to check your assumptions is really helpful if you have to touch an unfamiliar section of the code base for a patch.