Hi,

On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 19:32, WJhonson@aol.com wrote:

A few years ago, I had asked that IRC have a searchable archive of discussions.  I was told that there were daily logs and I could get one if  I asked.  I asked, and was denied.  Until IRC commits itself to  openness, it should have little to no impact on any facet of our project.   Without searchable archives, IRC is not open in the modern sense, regardless of  who or how you can join it, or view it.  The archives of this mailing list  are searchable.

On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 11:46, wjhonson@aol.com wrote:

Why couldn't the logs be released to the public ?

Wikimedia's IRC channels have a (very) long-standing no public logging policy with the argument that IRC is not on-wiki and the extra freedom of no logs encourages people to float ideas that they might not otherwise dare to suggest. There are other arguments too.

There are plenty of us that disagree with this policy despite being in the front line in enforcing it, including myself. To me, it's foolish because it's totally unenforceable. The people we don't want to post logs - i.e. the trolls - still do so on their various websites, meaning that little is achieved with the policy other than giving ops a good reason to ban troublesome users. There was however little consensus to change the policy when discussions were held maybe a year ago, so nothing was altered, and we continue to enforce the policy as best we can.

S