Comment 53 for bug 392799

Continental channels? Oh good grief no. For the reasons others including those who do or used to manage users in the IRC environment on a daily basis have already desperately shouted no.

Block joins by default in config will cause confusion all of its own (newbies freaked out when someone disappears totally while talking to them without any indication whatsoever), but it's sure worth finally trying.

But it's definitely better than fragmenting a community that is already fragmented by the lingua franca. The english-speaking community would be really diminished under Jono's suggesion as it would result in UK/Za in .eu with thirty zillion european languages, US/Ca in with spanish/portuguese and so forth, and Au/NZ in with the 30 zillion asian languages.

You're really not going to improve the situation for Newbies of any country by making it harder for Americans to help the Brits, Aussies to help the English-speaking Italians or South Africans to help English-speaking Asians.