>Is the expectation that someone could squat (as per the new channel description) a channel for all perpetuity, even if they no longer participate on the platform?
It's like that on some of the less-modern networks like EFnet. For a long time there were no services to automatically grant channel operator status and so folks would either amass a network of trusted humans large enough to pass the +o flag between each other as timezones awoke and went about their days, and/or they would herd large flocks of bots to perform the same.
Efnet and it’s non registered chaos is what drew me into computers and made me write my first lines of code. I really felt like a part of community having to hold channels. I learned so much about the underlying network protocols that made the internet work and went on to go to a vocation high school for networking. This story was actually confusing to me at first because I never really joined IRC servers that allowed the registrations of usernames let alone channels.
It's like that on some of the less-modern networks like EFnet. For a long time there were no services to automatically grant channel operator status and so folks would either amass a network of trusted humans large enough to pass the +o flag between each other as timezones awoke and went about their days, and/or they would herd large flocks of bots to perform the same.