I disagree. I run all comms for https://pico.sh through IRC on libera and people really struggle to onboard into IRC. People will pop-in ask a question, then leave because they arrive to a chat that is empty and didnt see any activity in 5mins and bounce.

We tried to offer a bouncer instance for users and even that had a barrier to entry because it requires creating 2 accounts: one for libera and one for pico.

I think about us switching to ergo every few months because I think the onboarding experience will be much nicer.

Logging into a channel for the first time and see the chat log will make people a lot more motivated to stay.

I agree. The reason IRC is so good is that it is mostly stateless and stores very little information beyond lists of IPs associated with each socket it's stuffing messages into.

Once a server starts hosting for people there are a huge set of problems and pressures. IRC is the text chat layer of the internet. It's not by itself, it's part of a larger network of open protocols. If you avail yourself to these it far exceeds the capabilities of even the most featureful walled corporate garden.