Downvoted for drama-queening. I have previously participated in forums which had supplementary IRC channels. In all cases it was expressly stated that airing a chat drama in a public forum is a bannable offense on the forum. This is a purely consequentialist approach. People filter what they say in private much less than what they say in public, so misunderstandings happen and tempers flare, then settle, usually just as quickly. Dragging an issue to a public forum makes it last much longer than warranted, drags in people who lack context and are unfamiliar with IRC dynamics and generally makes the forum a worse place.

An extreme case: what if everything you say was logged and someone with a grudge could make some particularly unflattering snippets accessible to the general public?

So, if you have issues with gwern or someone else on #lesswrong, PM him and talk it over, or do it in the channel, not here, where people unfamiliar with the situation get "concerned" and request an apology.