What about a simple restructuring the mailing lists and/or chat so that they are tiered? Drive noob developers to the support list first, then use the devel list only as an escalation point.
support - A list for support questions, including installation and configuration issues as well as help in developing contrib modules for drupal. Ask here first. development - A list to talk about development strategies or advanced development topics. Only ask questions here if you can't get your answer on the support forum. I don't think anyone heard me when I said that right now if you look at our mailing list page, we drive people who are doing development to this list for their support. A simple fix on that page would be to actually tell people that if you want help coding something, you should try the support list first. Myself I like XMPP better, because my work still blocks IRC for some silly reason. But that being said, I don't think chat IRC scales well for following multiple conversations. When I'm working with individual developers on a project I tend to ask them to skype chat me.
