"But what forms of online communication are effective for managing such a vast community? Mailing lists are powerful, allowing for further discussion of activity on Launchpad. Mailing lists are publicly archived collections of conversations, and similar to email services you might already be familiar with such as Google Groups, Yahoo Groups and Posterous. However, the bulk of online activity actually takes place in the form of online meetings, and these happen on IRC. What on earth is IRC? - I hear you ask. It's short for Internet Relay Chat, it provides real-time text chat and it has been around for a LONG time. Wikipedia credits Jarkko Oikarinen for IRC's conception in August 1988!
"You'll find IRC at the heart of Ubuntu's development. IRC is a collection of networks, hosted on servers worldwide, each divided into chat rooms (or channels) to group users by topic of interest. Anyone can join any network to communicate with others through channels, or via private message"
