The important thing to do is to make the bots channel +m, so only the bots
can talk. Otherwise, development discussion will follow to the new channel and this is a bad thing.
Agreed. Forcing the bots separate from the devs will keep the discussion a lot easier to follow too, both in real time and especially when reading logs.
I'm also in agreement that giving the bots their own channel is a great idea. I don't get on #mediawiki that terribly often, but Bug #35427 that Petr showed us convinced me that it needs done sooner than later.