David Mestel wrote:
Wikis in general, including MediaWiki in particular, are very poor for
conducting discussions
The thing I find is that on-wiki, anything you say which you later think better of stays around to haunt you forever. Obviously, however, openness is also a Good Thing, so I think that the bottom line is that IRC is a place for informal opinion-gathering, not for actual decision-making.
OK, but you still need to make the arguments in a public place, where after discussion on IRC some of the more stupid elements can be eliminated. Agreement on IRC is not on-wiki agreement. The new people that become involved may have very different ideas.
Ec