That's also what I believe is one of the main reasons why so many people do not use IRC for very long: they connect, they see other online people and assume those people are really there, they ask a question and when those online people do not respond right away, they assume those people are being rude and refusing to answer and so they leave right away and don't want to try it again because people are not nice there. While we should have a webchat, I really vote for something that also has a desktop client. I find nothing more frustrating to lose the chat because I accidentally made the tab go to a different page.
There will be further discussion on this at a later date, I intend to write up a pros/cons of IRC/XMPP and hold a poll to decide on which one to use
