Actually no one is banned right now unless you give me a reason to. And no, religious arguments don't happen all the time. We all respect each others ways, or at least tolerate them more times than not. Again, this is another reason I'm modding. If there is an argument I'm going to pull the offenders aside to talk about it and deals with them as situation warrants. ISP ban, kick, silence them until they calm down...whatever.

But if it brings activity up more don't you think it's worth it?

No.
Even if I did manage to make one (a huge pain in the ass) and link it to the forums (another pain in the ass), I would just be trying to make the people from the IRC try and join that. And IRC's are again, easier to manage from both a technical aspect and a community aspect.

Then you're doodoo out of luck my friend.

How polite of you.

Scuse me if you can't handle my bluntness.

Well he has a point, getting people in there may be hard with all the idling and no forum inbed

If you want the IRC to grow three things I think need to happen, the first of which is to make it clear on the site that the IRC exists. Many new forum members I have talked to don't even know the IRC even exists or where to find it. The second major thing is to personally take action, and to start conversation. Just like offline conversation takes a concerted effort, and there are going to be different circles of people who have different interest. To be honest I think people often bring eager to bring up the problem of having no one to talk to, but often don't put in a complete effort in addressing it by trying to create a topic. The last thing that could improve the IRC numbers is to have special get together events where people can meet at the same time. This way people will know the busy times, and can focus on a specific time of day rather than hoping to be on when it is busy.

The main thing we as staff can do is to make sure the IRC is a safe and polite place for everyone involved (at least in public chat). Personally I'm okay with a small but dedicated IRC, especially since some people are more conformable in the IRC. It isn't fair to expect that everyone on the IRC will want to post in forums, or vise versa, though encouraging participation in both is a good thing. This makes the IRC a place that encourages people to still be involved in the community. Still it is always nice to see the community grow, and for more people to get involved in chat. So far only one member has ever received a permanently ban from the IRC which is Boomcom (if you see him please report it to make or sahoni) who was sexist and rude to admids, and was banned at least twice (once by Vixen and once by prof).

Shame, but no hair off my back either way. Embedding it in the forums on top of that is beyond my abilities, if at all possible and a flash chat doesn't meet the needs of a community like this.

As for the idleness, the irc works in burst, most folks I know leave it on in the background while doing things around the house. And to be fair, D2 has a comparatively ACTIVE irc for its size. I've seen rooms with 200 people in them and no one talking for three days. Just stick around for more than five seconds. Seeing an anonymous mib nick pop in and out without say hello or giving others the chance five times a day gets kinda annoying and comes across as rude.

The things I'm taking away from this thread so far is this:
More active mods that will actually judge fairly a situation
More IRC hot times (say after a stream)
Advertise the IRC more

Okay I know how to revive the IRC. Destroy Skype.