> "This may discourage some of your potential users & contributors, and that may reduce the quality of your project."

> The exact same argument was made about not discouraging non-technical users who don't want to bother with the arcane-ness that is IRC, and the reply was that they don't matter.

Then they can email you if necessary. If there isn't a mail bot which takes email patches (or just emails) and converts them into IRC messages then that's something someone should be working on.