[dfabulich]

The post you're replying to isn't referring to "impermanence," it's referring to messages dropped in transit. IRC is an unreliable message transport even if all users are online and trying to listen to each other.

The most obvious version of this is a netsplit, but even single users can get isolated from the network and have all of their messages dropped without realizing it until minutes later (if ever). There's no cool name for that; it's just IRC being unreliable.

Maybe unreliability is part of the charm for you, but that bug is absolutely not a feature, and not intrinsic to being a "social protocol."

[ganzuul]

You are correct. IRC is not airtight.

You do however get informed by the server after a netsplit has occurred... and key-up retains most of what you have said recently so achieving coherency isn't difficult, although a manual task.