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