Extended IRC accessibility

Fancy title ahoy!

So there’s been voiced some desire to tie in the IRC support/community side of things a bit better with wp.org (This part of the idea I like!) and making it more accessible.

There’s been a few opinions on how this could be achieved;

• Add it to all codex pages as a permanent link/fixture near the end of all articles
• Add it to the forums so others may see it with a nifty tagline like “Visit our live chat for more help with this”
• On the wp.org drop-down menu under “Support” add a “Chat” option

This would incorporate a webchat client (we could use webchat.freenode.org, or roll our own, the qwebirc project is really good and their license suits us if memory serves me right), which would be easier to use on the end user than being required to find the webchat on their own/download and run a client/use a shady webchat.

My concern with this is the need for moderation then, with an influx of users, we will need to ideally have moderators available who can deal with problems as they arise. The current setup “works” (we all know I’m not entirely happy with it when a need arises) for the amount of users we see coming through now, but with an increase in users, we will have to consider an increase in moderator availability as well.

My personal opinion: Yes let’s do it…just as soon as we’ve sorted the moderator bit.

Discuss.