It is why I like IRC channels to have public logs. (These can be client-based logs or server-based logs; all I know are client-based, although server-based logs

It is why I like IRC channels to have public logs. (These can be client-based logs or server-based logs; all I know are client-based, although server-based logs are also possible and this is independent of the protocol; you don't need a new protocol to support them, although of course some way of accessing them would then be needed; Gopher (or HTTP) would work fine, and the topic message could link to them.)