Are you tired of going into a channel on IRC, asking your question, and not getting any responses? Wouldnt it be nice to not have to constantly read every line in a channel just to see how you can help someone else? If you have answered yest to both of these, then im glad im not alone.
My first thoughts were..Is there an IRC client or plugin that helps with highlighting just questions? Im just thinking it would be nice to be in a chat room and have questions appear in a different color that way you dont have to continually read everything. I know some people will say, just use forums, but i was hoping that there might be some kind of merge between IRC / Forum/ Twitter. This, I think, would help people to focus on questions being asked, and not necessarily have to read all the conversations.
This also might be bigger than just a plugin for an IRC app. It might just be a new way to use IRC. Kind of like mixing Twitter and IRC. When asking a question in an IRC channel you could use a global syntax like sending replies or direct messages on twitter. (ie. asking a question in IRC channel could be “:q What is IRC?”) It would also be nice to then list current questions that were asked in the channel since you joined. (ie. :lq ) This way you could be notified when a new question is asked, and not have to keep reading everything in the channel. You could be in a IRC channel and minimize the client, surfing the net….or whatever, and when a questions is asked in the channel you could go read what it is. I think this would help people get more of there questions answered, because i might know the answer to a question, but if im not reading everything that is going on in the channel at the time, then it would be easily missed.
What is everyones thoughts on this?
