Community chat servers for hobby OS projects

[NathanPre97]

Not strictly OS development, but related to running hobby projects.

A friend and I have a small hobby kernel and we opened a chat server for people following it. It grew faster than expected, mostly through a few people who kept inviting others from university. We wanted to know who actually brings in contributors rather than drive-by visitors, and the built in invite stats count everyone who clicks the link and leaves.

We tried another bot that ignores new throwaway accounts and people who leave, and it gave a much more honest picture.

For those of you with projects that have a community around them, do you use chat servers at all, or does IRC and the forum still cover it?