Personally, I believe this misses the point partially.
The point of IRC with a bouncer is to have a way of combining synchronous (live chatting) with asynchronous communication (highlights and reading up logs).
> What to do instead? Use IRC when you're actually there, leave when you're not. If you join IRC and you have a question for someone who is not there, send email to the project list (with a good subject!). Consider sending to the list even if the person who you think will be able to answer your question is present in IRC.
Many small projects don't actually have a mailing list; the closest thing to it is some kind of issue tracker, which comes with its own set of problems. Additionally, e-mail incurs a seemingly heavy time penalty to send -- some kind of greeting and valediction always must be present.
On IRC, doing so is amounts to almost wasting everyone's time if you have an issue to bring up. Of course, these kinds of cultural things vary between IRC channels, and these are just my two cents on this.
The point of IRC with a bouncer is to have a way of combining synchronous (live chatting) with asynchronous communication (highlights and reading up logs).
> What to do instead? Use IRC when you're actually there, leave when you're not. If you join IRC and you have a question for someone who is not there, send email to the project list (with a good subject!). Consider sending to the list even if the person who you think will be able to answer your question is present in IRC.
Many small projects don't actually have a mailing list; the closest thing to it is some kind of issue tracker, which comes with its own set of problems. Additionally, e-mail incurs a seemingly heavy time penalty to send -- some kind of greeting and valediction always must be present.
On IRC, doing so is amounts to almost wasting everyone's time if you have an issue to bring up. Of course, these kinds of cultural things vary between IRC channels, and these are just my two cents on this.