Freenode is a failure. Not too long after mIRC added support for MONITOR, freenode inexplicably disabled its MONITOR command. They've allowed it to remain in their 005-response, illegally.
Addendum: I'm informed that Freenode corrected its 005 response indicating explicit MONITOR support, a few months ago...
I can confirm that MONITOR is no longer in the freenode 005 response.
... but it still gives implicit MONITOR support which may or may not be confusing to some clients.
AFAIK there is no way to tell mIRC that MONITOR support is available if the 005 doesn't indicate it.
