I'm tempted to move to IRC...does it persist messages? I assume so, based on the discussion above. I'm quite sure that when I've used IRC in the past I haven't been able to see what has occured after I've left a channel but I imagine if I run my own server there is a simple solution to this problem. Anyone care to share (though I'm Googling as we speak)?
It does not! But the usual way people get around this is connecting to IRC using an IRC bouncer or irssi on a server somewhere and then connecting to that. This way you are "online" the whole time. But it's a thing everyone has to set up individually.
The other way it's handled is by having a bot sitting in channels (doing things like pushing warnings and error notices from your server, too) that records logs. Then you can visit a webpage that the bot hosts with the transcripts on. I'm sure there are packages that perform the logging directly on the server and host them, but it's useful to have some unlogged rooms, too.
