IIUC, Elric is referring to the usage of internal mailing lists, whose archives are (internally) open for anyone. Each discussion becomes a URL in its own righ

IIUC, Elric is referring to the usage of internal mailing lists, whose archives are (internally) open for anyone. Each discussion becomes a URL in its own right, and is blazing fast (given it is locally hosted); you can point the thread to the newcomer. I too think this is more effective than any chat "scroll-back" hosted on someone else's infrastructure—it can go down any moment.