IMO, there needs to be a method besides IRC and compiled-in seed nodes. A middle ground.
Maybe a few volunteers could independently host a DNS zone that returns a fresh list of nodes as ‘A’ records. A simple cron job could fetch fresh addresses from the bitcoin client, to update the DNS zone every so often. A DNS lookup would be far faster than an IRC connection, and if we have enough volunteers, the loss of a DNS server or two would not impact the service.