A IRC server can log. I have once programmed a IRC server to do this for a predefined set of channels, and the MOTD mentions where to find the logs. (This way, everyone is aware of the logs.) Whether or not it logs has nothing to do with the protocol; it can be a feature of the implementation.

and most channels have a valid and longstanding rule against public logs.

because if you were raised as i was in the internet of the mid-90s, logs and real names are weapons, and we don’t do that to our friends.

Anyone reading can "log" the messages. If anything, a server that always logs just forces you to understand that your messages were never protected.

Yes, of course, and i maintain private logs for my reference.

Public logs are another matter.

Anyone who has private logs can leak them, and nobody will know who did the leak if care is taken.

But anyone can log the messages and at any point they can come out for a number of reasons. None of them have to be negative or evil. Stuff happens.

I find in many ways it’s worse to hand wave and say there’s a policy against something where no one can actually control that policy.

Also, many people don’t understand that things can still be logged or tracked. So the policy example given can give many people false thoughts.

An example is Zoom video chats. It has a record feature. The record feature once on turns on shows a blinking recording icon. In one instance people got a bit upset about it. They were even more surprised and couldn’t completely grok that any one at any time can screen record their own desktops without any one ever being notified or knowing. So Zoom letting you know is actually better.

And since IRC was made, storing message history has become an expected feature for chat applications.

That's an expected feature that only makes sense if you're part of a community that expects to share all communication.

On the Ardour's project's main IRC channel, it makes absolutely zero sense for the vast majority of people in the channel to be able to drop off the channel for 2 days, and come back and read everything they missed. The social expectations and norms there don't make this a sensible or reasonable expectation.

Contrast with "modern chat systems" ... in most of their uses, this is an entirely reasonable expectation because you are a _member_ of the group, and simply being offline isn't a reason for you to miss messages.

In our case (Ardour), we have private IRC channels where this sort of expectation is more reasonable, and we run a Quassel server to provide "always-on" messaging for people who are "members" (i.e. people for whom it's sensible to expect that they never miss messages).

There's no technical reason a browser-based IRC client couldn't keep rotating logs.

where would they be kept? it wouldn't be the browser-based client that wrote and managed the log, surely, but (as with quassel), some server (e.g. the thing the browser talks to). and sure, someone could write a quassel-based in-browser IRC client. I don't believe it has been done thus far. That fact in and of itself points in the direction that others have mentioned: public logs of IRC channels are not part of the culture of IRC.

A browser-based client could persist the log in localStorage for basic history. It wouldn't capture conversation when you're offline, and it wouldn't store years of history or anything, but (1) it would solve the problem where the user refreshes the page and loses all their channel history and (2) nobody who is using such a web IRC client has a bouncer anyway.

I know. I've used mIRC lots 10+ years ago.

But the expectations for chat today has changed a lot