Well back when I use to be on both Gamesurge and Rizon I found Rizon was a bit more stable. Though Quakenet shouldn't be too bad, I haven't been around there for ages as well. Setting up a dedicated XoO server I really don't think would be worth it. Not only is that going to take maintenance to keep running smooth, if people aren't active it is just a waste of bandwidth having the server idle there. The best bet would be to start on an active gaming server or a server like Rizon which has an active community as well.
Really? VOIP is nice, but it can't be used in every circumstance. Believe it or not IRC is not "too old school" and a lot of gamers still use it.
It will not take that much maintenance to keep it running smoothly. You have a valid point regarding activity, it would be pointless to run it unless we had members/non-members using it.