[upsuper]

Yes, they are proprietary, which is not great. But I don't buy the allegation that they are not indexed or searchable. There are very few IMs that provide builtin publicly accessable log indexed or searchable by default. Does every IRC server come with public log? What about Matrix groups? How do discussion there not get lost in timeline?

You can provide public log of them not because they are not proprietary, but that they have API to allow logging. Telegram also has such API, and FWIW our discussion group does have searchable log that you can access here: https://luoxu-web.vercel.app/#g=1264662201 It is not indexable publicly more for privacy concern, again not because the platform is proprietary.

[fsniper]

This is not a way to have bug discussions, or record them. Do you really think I could find this information on a search for a similar issue?

Only thing that makes this bug and the process of the debug visible is this blog post.

Another point is I don't think IRC or any instant messaging app is the correct place for this kinds of discussions. Unless important points are logged to some bug reporting tool, or perhaps a mailing list, or to a blog post like this one, they are useless for historic purposes.

[upsuper]

So there is nothing about being proprietary, but just about using IM?

I don't fully agree. IMs are a great place to discuss issues in a semi-synchronous way. Telecon or face-to-face meetings are sometimes better in velocity, but IMs have some edge on bringing random people happen to be online into the discussion. And it can also bring a different audience into the issue than bug reporting tools or mailing list.

When this issue was brought into the group, it just took several hours for curious people there to collaboratively find the conclusion. This is something unlikely to happen in any other form of discussions based on my experience.

But I agree that group chat is not a great way to record it, and that's why the findings are recorded on the GitHub issue, and group members also encouraged the author to write this up. Then it got posted on HN and on /r/rust by two different group members as well. (The author's initial posting on HN was mysteriously taken down, so the op here helped posting it again.)