Hey William,
I'll speak from my experience.
I've noticed that the developers I work with (mostly younger developers) have embraced tech like Github, Slack, and Gitter. When I first tried Slack I didn't like it much but now I understand the appeal.
I remember trying IRC a long time ago. It seemed to work for the time but for whatever reason I didn't take to it.
This part is my opinion, but if a community like Haskell wants to gain wider appeal we have to meet new people where they are at.
Most people know about Github and like Github. A solution like Gitter integrates nicely. Slack isn't a good option because it's designed for businesses in mind. The chat history is limited and you have to pay for extra features.
IRC is a bit aged. It doesn't make it bad but newer developers are interested in the new shiny technology. I've also seen a few posts that in order to get it to work well (ie having a chat history) you have to have a hosted service. That's overhead I rather not have.
But more importantly, we should meet the community where they're at and that's on Github.
Best,
Ben Spencer
On Dec 07, 2016, at 11:41 AM, William Yager