Chat in general, as per my earlier message, is for pretty ephemeral stuff. You should not be entrusting important decisions to it. Plenty of networks, like Freenode, solve the 'who is this person' thing in that, for instance, no one else can grab a nick for more than, say, 30 seconds.

I use IRC all the time to talk with people who are experts in some particular technology, and need absolutely none of this infrastructure.