What was even with that thread? I was never senior staff so I only have IRC tendencies to go by. They say move on but I find that impossible as a CAP mod and especially with how that thread turned out...
Also are there any good channels nowadays? Most places I've been to are pretty dead, and I always have to overcome a sort of creepy feeling when joining channels. It gets worse as I get older.
I don't go on synIRC anymore except to query people basically :( so I don't really know, sorry. I wish I could help! It made me really sad to see a lot of vibrant communities just kinda fade out over time, even if most of those people are doing better things now I guess. I have the same sort of feeling of intruding when I join new channels, so when I left synIRC I pretty much quit IRC except to ask for help with math and programming on freenode X)
Hope you're doing well these days, keep doing your best. :D