If someone found it necessary to manually access the addresses of users who have sat idly in the channel not triggering any join/text/mode/etc events... then yes, they would have to either /who that person or simply /who the #channel. Once.
There is NEVER.. EVER.. A reason to /WHO a channel more than once since you last joined it. After you /who a channel, your IAL becomes completely populated and stays that way. New people who join are immediately added and those who leave are removed accordingly.
The only reason someone would periodically /who anyone in 30 second intervals, is if they were obsessed with their Here/Gone status, or paranoid that they may have become an oper since they last checked (OMG! AN OPER!). As I explained earlier, Here/Gone isn't even useful unless everyone shares the same server.
This is extremely wasteful behavior, and more servers need to follow suit and crack down on people whose scripts issue such commands. I can understand if you are an OP in a channel and have been assigned anti-clone duty, where you might need to /who the channel (again only ONE time is necessary and effective), but most users simply do not need this information to be successful in a channel. 99% of the time, this information is discarded, yet lame scripts still carry on querying for it.
- Rantcoon
