While IRC is decent overall, It doesn’t really compare to modern messaging clients such as Slack
- A lot of your conversations are drowned and lost inbetween messages from other users discussing other issues
- It’s hard to keep track of what you’ve discussed and have log of messages received.
- Proxy issues with IRC resulting in instant ban from IRC servers (@avijitghosh82!
)
We have Telegram but I doubt it addresses all the issues above. I faced a few communication issues in GSoC too which led me to building something that solves all of the problems above.
How about a bot that
- Relays messages back and forth from IRC and Slack allowing you to see IRC messages on Slack and vice versa
- You can @ users on the other platform by simply pinging them with their usernames there like you normally do.
- Receive only those messages from IRC to Slack where you/your team members are mentioned with all your messages being transmitted over at IRC and being reachable by anyone at anytime on IRC by simply pinging you by your slack username.
- You can also switch to full fledged IRC messages being transmitted over to your Slack channel and get a list of users on either platform by simply pinging the bot.
This way:
- All your communication is 100% public. The bot doesn’t allows you to stop relaying messages from Slack to IRC in anyway.
- You have a log of what you’ve discussed in your slack channel which is between you and your projectmembers
- A legit mobile client from Slack
And everyone’s happy 
Finally, here’s the tool I built: GitHub - metagabbar/irackbot: Bridge between Slack and IRC channels allowing message filtering and logging while keeping communication public (checkout the README it’s pretty detailed)
Chat example
A few features shown
I’d like to know if it’s alright to run a Bot on the OpenMRS IRC and Slack channels. I’d volunteer to manage the Slack channel since no one currently is and maybe even update the wiki.
Also, I’d like some feedback on what you guys think about the idea. Such things usually crop up from personal struggles and as developers we try to resolve that 
PS: Please do Star the repository on GitHubi if you liked this. I’m going to ask Slack to list it up on their community tools section here https://api.slack.com/community and the stars would definitely help! Other communities could also consider using something like this.
