I can't quite agree with the philosophy.  I think "announce on the noticeboards," and then you can talk to people like a normal human with normal conversation on IRC, if you're going to be there anyway.  Fundamentally, though, IRC is not part of Wikipedia: it's part of Freenode.  Wikipedia's rules are suspended there, including keeping a history, open editing, etc.  Therefore, if you announce first on IRC, you have, effectively, not announced at all.  I've tried to avoid taking such a draconian line, but that is the actual line.  In the meantime, knowing that people will say things as soon as they notice them, and, if they're on IRC at the time, they'll say it first there, the biggest thing is that every IRC user needs to know that whatever is said there simply hasn't been said at all, as far as Wikipedia is concerned.
My talk page should be mysterious to anyone who hasn't seen the logs of en.administrators.irc from Christmas Eve.  For myself I will say this much: I don't get actually angry very often, and when I read those logs I was enraged.  That should say something.  No doubt that argument doesn't look helpful, but I'm willing to go through it and look bad, if necessary, to get people to stop sniping from behind a screen.  If they want to denigrate me, want to spend time characterizing "idiots who complain," then they should do so where they have to be subject to the same "assume good faith" and "civility" and "no personal attacks" rules that they have blocked people for (repeatedly).  
I was working on this essay prior to Christmas Eve.  All that did was turn up the heat and encourage me to focus both on general best practices and the fundamental abuse that is en.administrators.irc.  IRC has some rationale.  The en.administrators.irc has none whatever that I can see.