[drupal-devel] Move #drupal to #drupal-devel and #drupal-support to #drupal?

[Steven Wittens]

I am in Gerhard's camp and also believe IRC-based support is a rubbish 
idea. The 'solution' of making the chat logs public won't solve a thing, 
because no-one who is too lazy to read a topic will go through the 
trouble of actually digging through a chat log (which is a couple orders 
of magnitude more work).

- #drupal is the place where most new people would enter. Do we want the 
first sight of Drupal chat to be a bustling hub of development activity, 
or do we want it to be cesspit of repetitive support questions whose 
life-span is measured in minutes?

- #drupal has always been about developers meeting and talking. By 
making #drupal a support channel, we are saying that providing support 
for our users is more important than developing the software. That 
statement offends me: I develop for personal benefit; to extend my 
knowledge, hone my skills and for the satisfaction of creating something 
valuable.

- if people are vaguely interested in Drupal, they will idle in #drupal, 
not #drupal-devel. Thus, it is a barrier to entry and shields 
development from public eyes. What do we have more trouble with: 
attracting new users, or attracting new developers? Hint: it's not the 
first.

- If users are frustrated because they see a bunch of people chatting 
yet unwilling to answer their questions, perhaps they shouldn't assume 
that information is free and that somehow, knowledgable people have a 
duty to inform the ignorant.

Steven