We recently had our main chat room frozen on the DIY site because we're not that talkative. I'd suggest a feature to allow moderators to explicitly protect chatrooms that would exclude them from these automatic freezing and deletion routines so that discussions appropriate for this forum have a place to go.
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4Note Drupal.SE also had their main chat room frozen recently as well, so it's not just a problem isolated to DIY.– user149432Aug 1, 2011 at 13:54
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2The "main" chat rooms are actually just a normal chat room that people have created and then decided is the main one, the system doesn't have any concept of a "main" room, so they receive no special treatment. To complete your request, either that needs changing or mods need to be given a way to "protect" arbitrary rooms from automatic shutdown. But, personally, I'm not entirely convinced this is necessary - if a main room sees no activity at all for 14 days then it's not really much of a main room, is it?– DMA57361Aug 1, 2011 at 14:41
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8@DMA57361, on low volume sites, there aren't any other rooms either, which limits chatting to only people with 100 rep. Allowing mods to make a protected room sounds like a good solution. Maybe sort those up top as the primary rooms for a site.– BMitchAug 1, 2011 at 15:58
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1Same thing happened on DSP.SE. chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/1090/signal-processing meta.dsp.stackexchange.com/a/1232/29 chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/9727/uhh General discussion chat room should never be frozen.– endolithJul 24, 2013 at 19:10
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Count Code Golf in. Frozen/unfrozen several times.– Johannes KuhnDec 3, 2013 at 12:47
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4Perhaps limit it so that each site must have at least one chat room that isn't frozen?– 3venticDec 3, 2013 at 13:26
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4@3ventic when I've seen that suggestion, the criteria was the last active room would not be frozen. This makes a situation where a new room started for a specific topic would get considered active and instantly freeze the main room if the main room hasn't been used in a while. IMO, protecting a room should be a mod feature so that one or more rooms per site can be designated as always available. E.g. some sites have rooms specifically to contact the mods that are relatively unused but should never be frozen due to their purpose.– BMitchDec 3, 2013 at 13:58
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1 Answer
This is now implemented. Main chat rooms do not freeze automatically due to inactivity. I checked various chat rooms like Project Management, main chat room for Project Management and "Bar Sport", main chat room of Italian Language. Both the rooms are not frozen in spite of inactivity.
In PM Stack Exchange chat room, last message was posted 638 days ago before I posted a recent test message. In "Bar Sport", there are no feeds. But messages posted by feeds do not count as messages. Other chat rooms freeze even if there are feeds posting in chat room.
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This applies to meta sites' chat rooms too, right?– user392547Nov 26, 2018 at 6:06
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2Not sure it's about main rooms, more likely that if there is only one single room for a site, it won't auto freeze. Unless you have proof that's not the case? Nov 26, 2018 at 8:23
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@ShadowWizard Most likely, the room which was created by system is the room which doesn't freeze. Nov 26, 2018 at 9:42
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2Hmm... pretty sure that I saw something about single room not being frozen too even if not the original main room. (i.e. main room can get deleted, it happened on arqade I think) Nov 26, 2018 at 9:46
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1@shadow Probably here "We do try to keep at least one room open per site, but it looks like some 1:1 rooms (question-related rooms between a few users) were taking precedence." diy.meta.stackexchange.com/a/351 Nov 26, 2018 at 9:48
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4Actually, the "last standing" chat room is the one that won't be frozen, regardless if it's "main" chat room or not. CS50's "main" chat room is frozen because there were newer active chat rooms, until someone deleted the last one, and now the site doesn't have any open chat room... Feb 10, 2019 at 0:48
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2To demonstrate that Bookends is correct and this answer is wrong, I dropped by Open Data site and created a room: soon thereafter, their main room was frozen for inactivity. (Oops)– user302202Feb 10, 2019 at 0:53
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@Bookends Ok. I think the mechanism has changed after this answer is posted. When i posted this answer, I checked in multiple rooms. If you check cliffb chat room, it has not frozen for 6 months even there is no message. So, the main room is still an exception from automatic deletion. (btw, cs50 Site doesn't have a chat room? Is that fine). Feb 10, 2019 at 2:22
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1@NogShine based on the FAQ, a room will be either deleted or frozen, and most "main" chat rooms have passed the retention threshold, so they won't be deleted and only will be frozen forever. Also, I believe "main" chat room can be deleted automatically if no one participates and another chat room is created. IMHO, it's probably easier to think that actually there is no concept of "main" chat room; every chat room is subjected to the same rules. Feb 10, 2019 at 2:40
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What happens to the chat link on SE log dropdown the if the "main" chat room is deleted?– RubénFeb 10, 2019 at 2:53
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2@Rubén it still goes to the chat room page filtered to that particular site, but empty just like CS50.SE chat room Feb 10, 2019 at 12:27
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7This answer is wrong. There is no concept of “main chatroom”. What happens is that the last active chatroom of a site will not freeze, but it could be any room, e.g. a room automatically created by “move comments to chat”. I'm not aware that anything has changed since balpha's answer and your observations don't contradict that. Mar 24, 2019 at 9:56