Back in the day, maybe 2003ish to about 2008ish, I would actually get most of my BL from IRC. This was before the online manga sites like OneManga, MangaReaders, etc. became big or cloud services were offered by 4Share, Mega, or MediaFire. IRC died out thanks to these services, and I can understand why: Distributors didn't have to maintain a server and it was easier for the users to press a link instead of learning how to use IRC.

Still, I found it had its pros. Link decay is a really big problem in the manga world considering most scanlation groups die out after two years, and if no one's uploading it, you're fucked. It was also easier to just get a whole person's collection at once instead of tediously going to each group's site. Some people didn't just have manga but also anime or OSTs. I would spend about ten minutes queuing up everything and then the next hour just doing whatever as it ran seamlessly in the background.

I think the best system would be a combination of both, but when I went to the old IRC channels they're pretty much dead now. I may just not know the new ones, but I haven't seen groups proudly posting their channel on their main page in years; the only place I can think of that actively still uses it is Nipponsei, and they don't do manga. For BL at least I think it's recent obsession with controlling distribution because of online readers, so the thought of someone else hosting their shit on their own server probably wouldn't be attractive to them. Still, using Nipponsei recently made me realize the advantages back then that I've lost.