[tracker1]

FreeNode seems to have some really active channels... outside of that, all I see on the servers I connect to now and then are a lot of lurkers.

The cool thing is, in general when I've exhausted my options, a lot of people deeply involved in various projects do tend to hang out in freenode's channels. I don't keep hexchat open all the time, just fallen out of habit, but I'll be in ##javascript and #csharp mostly, lately I've also been joining in on ##rust (though I have to manually enter as I'm blocked until after NickServ validation).

One key is to really keep one's expectations in check. You'll get a faster response in IRC than say a Github issue, but nobody is under any obligation to help you and it's good to be mindful of that and respectful.

[scaryclam]

Slightly off topic, but did you know you can use SASL to auto identify with NickServ on Freenode?

Edit: typo

[tracker1]

Did not know that, thanks... will have to update my setup... just used to NickServ for it all.