hi-
i'm hopeful this is the appropriate venue for this topic - i recently had occasion to visit #mediawiki on freenode, looking for help. i found myself a bit frustrated by the amount of bot activity there and wondered if there might be value in some consideration for this. it seems to frequently drown out/dilute those asking for help, which can be a bit discouraging/frustrating. additionally, from the perspective of those who might help [based on my experience in this role in other channels], constant activity can sometimes engender disinterest [e.g. the irc client shows activity in the channel, but i'm less inclined to look as it's probably just a bot].
to offer one possibility - i know there are a number of mediawiki and/or wikimedia related channels - might there be one in which bot activity might be better suited, in the context of less contention between the two audiences [those seeking help vs. those interested in development, etc]? one nomenclature convention that seems to be at least somewhat of a defacto standard is #project for general help, and #project-dev[el] for development topics. a few examples of this i've seen are android, libreoffice, python, and asterisk. adding yet another channel to this list might not be terribly welcome, but maybe the distinction would be worth the addition?
as i'm writing this, i see another thread has begun wrt freenode, and i also see a bug filed that relates at least to some degree [https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=35427], so i may just be repeating an existing sentiment, but i wanted to at least offer a brief perspective.
regards -ben