[Crinus]

> Actual conversations are fairly rare.

FWIW this is exactly my experience with pretty much every single IRC server and channel i've been the last 15 years or so. It used to be more... chatty before that, but over time people just join and idle.

I wonder if the ability to have IRCs running all the time actually harmed IRC since at the past (90s mainly and perhaps very early 2000s) if someone was in a channel, they'd be up for chatting too whereas now channels are full of "zombies".

Or it might just be a coincidence.

[Fnoord]

It started out as a necessity, and it isn't new. Its because of netsplits, DoS, and channel takeovers that bots existed on EFnet and IRCnet. Chanserv/Nickserv/X/W (and UnderNet/DALnet) came later on.

> I wonder if the ability to have IRCs running all the time actually harmed IRC since at the past (90s mainly and perhaps very early 2000s) if someone was in a channel, they'd be up for chatting too whereas now channels are full of "zombies".

Untrue; bots existed in past. Take a look at Eggdrop's age, for example. Whether it is much more common nowadays I don't know, but BNCs are nothing new either. If anything, it is because running a computer 24/7 is much more cheaper nowadays (although back then you could get a shell for e.g. 5-10 USD / month).

[Crinus]

Well it isn't just nowadays, as i said it was like that from the early 2000s - at least in my experience. But then it might just be coincidence with the IRC becoming less popular in general.