Freenode, the IRC network responsible for hosting communication servers for WordPress and many other open source projects will be performing maintenance on or around October 2nd. Freenode will remove expired nicks, channels, and accounts.
Although a lot of people have switched to SlackHQ from IRC to communicate in real-time, the WordPress support channel with hundreds of users still exists on Freenode with no plans to move it to Slack.
If you have a registered account on Freenode and have not identified with the service in 120 days or more, you must authenticate your account before October 2nd. You can do this by connecting to Freenode and using the /msg nickserv identify command, then enter your password.
If you’ve forgotten your password, use the /msg nickserv sendpass command to recover lost passwords. Alternatively, use the /msg nickserv help sendpass command to receive help recovering your password.
It’s especially important for users who have registered channels on Freenode to authenticate or else the username and channels associated with it will be removed.