Well this is just sad.. This is game development site with chat room and the room is so unfriendly to code. If anybody asks for help there and people are willing to help, they almost cant write even single line because of this.. Imagine showing example with std::vector and it throws such mess..
Uh, you've been in there long enough to know that this is a recent bug, likely to do with some back-end change or update that happened. I think you're making a mountain out of a molehill. Yes it's annoying, but it's just a bug.
I still don't get why the irc channel was dropped in favour of an html chat facility. Such facilities are never as good and never have as many users...
The IRC channel split off from the site because of a lack of interest by the GDNet staff and moderation team in moderating the IRC and with issues in maintaining the same rules and same moderation team (moderators -> ops) in sync and enforced. #gamedev still exists and is still well-populated.