> "This may discourage some of your potential users & contributors, and that may reduce the quality of your project."

> The exact same argument was made about not discouraging non-technical users who don't want to bother with the arcane-ness that is IRC, and the reply was that they don't matter.

Then they can email you if necessary. If there isn't a mail bot which takes email patches (or just emails) and converts them into IRC messages then that's something someone should be working on.

Your point is valid - and we basically agree that there are different types of barriers to entry.

However, as cyphar observes, there are always alternative methods for users & contributors to gain access - git repos (PR's), email - direct or lists, twitter, bug trackers, etc.

Slight aside -- I suspect there's some correlation between sophistication of question / contribution a user may be asking / making, and ability to navigate IRC. Either way, I don't see IRC's alleged complexity as being a barrier to any one who's serious, especially (as noted) in almost any project it won't be the exclusive method of communicating with members of the project.

Even more of an aside, I don't get this whole 'arcane-ness' (and similar) claims levelled against IRC -- is it genuinely that tricky? Most projects I've seen that includes IRC in their 'How to contact us' page provides links to IRC clients, clearly identifying their network & channel names, and even sometimes a link to a free web client that drops them straight into chat (so about the same level of convenience as Slack etc).