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I have been noticing for a long time the number of bins amongst Stack Overflow chat rooms.

Here are a few:

then there are a few more ...

There are a couple more if you type 'bin' in a chat room search.

I understand the need for multiple chat rooms, each for a different topic, but I couldn't comprehend the simultaneous existence of 7+ bins.

According to this post, a room will be deleted when the entire room is off topic. So why aren't bins ever cleaned or deleted, but instead they multiple in numbers like the spring rabbits.

A better question would be: should there be multiple off topic rooms like those bins?

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  • 7
    Cannot resist - because there is so much garbage.
    – Martin James
    Commented Feb 24, 2014 at 15:25
  • 3
    There's lots of trash on the Internet, we need enough bins to put it in
    – Tony The Lion
    Commented Feb 24, 2014 at 15:26
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    I think the only valid reason to create such a room is to have mod powers in that room. Without mod powers you can't undo (move the deleted message back).
    – HamZa
    Commented Feb 24, 2014 at 15:29
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    Well, we need to store your chat contributions somewhere @sudo :p
    – Bart
    Commented Feb 24, 2014 at 15:55
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    "So why aren't bins ever cleaned or deleted, but instead they multiple in numbers like the spring rabbits." - because there is no active discussion in bins, having them around is 'free', it doesn't clutter or cost anything and it doesn't really harm the overall quality of the chat. In short it's a non-issue.
    – Benjamin Gruenbaum
    Commented Feb 24, 2014 at 16:20
  • Bins are cleaned. In order to delete a message from a bin, it has to be moved to a bin. So when cleaning a bin, messages which should be deleted are moved to a new bin. This is how so many bins exist. The technical term is bin recursion.
    – Travis J
    Commented Feb 24, 2014 at 16:50
  • @HamZa in theory maybe, but in practice, very few messages ever get moved back.
    – user202362
    Commented Feb 26, 2014 at 7:06
  • @Bart I am sure 1 bin would be enough for all my messages, no need to have 10 bins just because occasionally my messages suit other bins >_< my existence is tiny & my messages are ... well ... meta, I <3 you so much, I am attract to you just like an common mynah bird to a huge trash bin <3 <3
    – user202362
    Commented Feb 26, 2014 at 7:10

1 Answer 1

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This question presupposes that the bins are created for some kind of logical reason. They're not. They're created as a filthy hack around the fact that the chat is not actively maintained so you can't delete messages.

None of the bin rooms should actually exist. But until the developers start developing again, this shitstorm of hacks is what we're stuck with.

"Why do the developers permit multiple bins to exist?" "For the same reason any bins exist- because they don't care".

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    You might be right...but talk about a harsh way to put it.
    – Makoto
    Commented Feb 24, 2014 at 16:29
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    We've been complaining about it for years. Neither nice nor harsh had any noticable effect so I see no reason to hold back.
    – DeadMG
    Commented Feb 24, 2014 at 16:32
  • @Makoto lol, 'harsh'. This is putting it politely.
    – thecoshman
    Commented Feb 24, 2014 at 17:01
  • @DeadMG Is there a feature request to allow room owners to delete messages? If not we should make one. Nothing like a real written proposal ya know.
    – ɥʇǝS
    Commented Apr 11, 2014 at 20:15
  • Been done a thousand times over. Chat is the project of a developer who left the company, as near as we can tell. We've gotten something like six trivial features and bug fixes in the last three years. You won't get anything here.
    – DeadMG
    Commented Apr 11, 2014 at 23:17