That's not the case either though - many users have bouncers that will sit in the channel the whole time, and you have no idea who might be saving logs or where they might be publishing them. It's the worst of both worlds.

>many users have bouncers that will sit in the channel the whole time

Then I know they're reading.

>and you have no idea who might be saving logs or where they might be publishing them

If I'm in a room with you nothing stops you from telling others what I've told you.

> If I'm in a room with you nothing stops you from telling others what I've told you.

Sure, but I won't have a complete written record like an IRC log, and won't be able to credibly quote.

how would one credibly quote on IRC? Isn't the chat log enough for you?

My point is that chat logs make IRC a lot more "on the record" than in-person discussions in practice (even if not in theory). Anyone who's keeping a log can quote directly from it, and those quotes are credible (if nothing else, because the person posting them doesn't know who else was keeping a log and can call out inaccurate quotes).