GroupUserInterface: Why are "other services" not listening on #wiki-alerts? That IRC channel could be our "bus" that connects all the systems.
Yes, you can very much use IRC channels as "Machine Buses."
With the Python XML-RPC library at least, you can say: "Give me a string in XML-RPC, as if I was going to push this over the Internet to a target server."
Then, you can instead push that message onto an IRC channel.
Then other programs can pick it up off the IRC channel, carry out the function call, and just toss their results. (Or post them.)
Basically, we just use it as a mechanism to get lists, strings, dictionaries, and numbers delivered to our targets.
A nice thing about it is that you get TransparentMessaging for free: You just /join the #channel, and you can see everything that's going on.
You make me want to get to work on JOAP.