On Mon, 23 Nov 2009 11:29:14 +0000, Giacomo M-Z wrote:

Troling? what is trolling about pointing out that IRC is not the place to be dicusisng Wikipedia policy affairs? Secondly, it may be free now (I have no idea), but it certainly was not in the past - ?15 was the figure at one time.

For somebody who's always criticizing IRC, you certainly seem to be quite ignorant of it. IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is a free and open protocol for real-time discussions, going back to the late 1980s, and based on an earlier Bitnet Relay protocol that goes back even further (I remember it from my college days in the '80s). There are pleny of entirely free IRC clients (such as the Chatzilla add-on for Firefox); the Mozilla SeaMonkey browser suite has it built in; and there are Web interfaces to it using applets. The servers you connect to are also free to use. The only charges that could possibly be involved are the normal Internet access charges from your ISP, which you would incur for any sort of Internet use.

As for whether Wikipedia matters ought to be discussed only on-wiki, lots of people including yourself have, on occasion, chosen other forums (including this mailing list) to discuss things related to Wikipedia. There are many pros and cons of different venues and media.