Hi, the IRC channels were taken off blender.org at some point and although development and most of the support channels have moved to Rocket Chat and Discord, #blender on Freenode is still quite active with 250-300 users.
RC has some clear advantages like offline history, but also some downsides like the need for registration and less choices with client software.
Could Freenode/#blender be sign-posted somewhere on the support page for users that still prefer to use IRC?