>>51
Chat networks are poor, anti-anonymous forum(Stores IPs(which are often public), password protects names), requires live updates/constant attention and wastes horrible amount of bandwidth for any amount of users(so most hosts ban IRC servers in any form).
IRC does't archive anything, doesn't have any stable state(a channel state changes with every mode, ban and privilege change), it also doesn't scale(consider a channel filled with 1000 people chatting at once and any website with 1000 people on a forum thread)