I really wish IRC was still the defecto choice for open source projects. Now days all I see is gitter/slack/discord/matrix which I find all have a significantly worse experience than IRC.

If IRC was stateful (ie, it would "remember"/deliver offline messages when I sign-on again (at least buffer them for some configurable period)), I'd be onboard with using it for almost everything

But it's not

That's what made Slack so appealing early on - IRC-like communication with history

Maybe you know already, but you can use an IRC relay to act as pseudo client, connect to that and then read back on messages. You’ll have to find a place to host it though. For example, “The Lounge”.

Edit: typo

Yeah, you can ... but that's a bolt-on/additional service that, quite frankly, IRC ought to Just Do™ at this point

It's 2022, not 1988 :)

I just keep my irssi running on a Vultr VM.

I used to do that

Too much hassle, imo

IRC has OP’s problem taken to the next level. The people clinging onto IRC in this age are increasingly insufferable.

That's the opposite of my experience even to this day. As long as you follow question asking etiquette (do research before you ask, don't ask to ask, explain what you've tried so far, etc), people are usually good at answering questions when they can.

Funnily enough your comment describes SO just the same. How many people complaining about SO here have really just asked poor questions, hadn't explained what they tried, didn't do enough research first to ask a good question, etc.

You may both be right. Chances are this varies wildly from IRC channel to IRC channel.