I have had my own share of problems with both portalled rooms as well as plumbed rooms on Matrix. Dropped messages, dropped connections, etc. were some of the problems. Sometimes the re-connection times can be several hours long. Despite these problems, the portalled rooms have been a convenient way to quickly set up a relatively persistent connection to the IRC network via the Matrix bridge.<p>That convenience is now going to be lost unless the IRC channel operators opt-in to create an account on Matrix, then set up a plumbed room on Matrix, and then advertise the plumbed rooms sufficiently well. Of course, many regular IRC users set up an IRC bouncer (I use ZNC myself) to keep a persistent connection to the IRC network, so this move would not affect them. But the portalled rooms served as a good alternative to setting up IRC bouncers yourself and unfortunately, this nice alternative is now going away.<p>As a channel moderator, I haven't been too happy with the plumbed channels either. For example, one of the things I have found to be a little problematic is that the Matrix bridge service joins the Matrix room with <i>Admin</i> power level. To avoid these complications, I wrote my own tiny script to bridge the Matrix rooms and IRC channels I needed. Since my script joins the networks as an ordinary client, it does not need elevated privileges in the channels/rooms. In case, anyone is interested in the script, I have shared it here: <a href="https://github.com/susam/nimb">https://github.com/susam/nimb</a><p>The section "Differences from Matrix Appservice" at the bottom of the README in the preceding link explains some of the inconveniences I faced with the Matrix bridge service for plumbed channels and why I had to write my own script to avoid them.