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Our chat room, Ham Shack, is now inaccessible!

For years, Ham Shack was not closed for lack of activity. But it just automatically closed after only 14 days of inactivity. 😡

Please put it back the way it was ASAP. TIA.

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  • $\begingroup$ Moderators, please add the Featured tag and unfreeze that room. $\endgroup$
    – Mike Waters
    Commented May 23 at 20:23

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A short answer is: No, it hasn't been reduced.

As explained in the chat FAQ, a room is frozen after it is inactive for 14 days. See the section "Will these rooms exist forever?" (And a room with very low activity is deleted after being silent for 7 days - but we're talking here about the room which already had many messages and is not in danger of being deleted.)

There is one exception. The chat software still keeps at least one room for the site open - even if that room was inactive for more than 14 days. (And the rooms imported from comments do not count for this purpose.)

If there are several rooms associated with the site and one of them reaches 14 days with no messages, this room is frozen.

This is what happened here - shortly before the room Ham Shack was frozen, another room called Amateur Radio was created. (In the meantime, that room was deleted - and this site has again only one room, if we discount the rooms imported from comments.)

If the room is needed, this should not really be a problem - any moderator can unfreeze a frozen chatroom. See also: How do I unfreeze a frozen chat room?

See also: Don't freeze a chatroom soon after a mod has unfrozen it. (There is an answer by balpha explaining some of this stuff.) Some links related to this are collected also here: Main chatroom for a SE site and chatroom pruning.

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  • $\begingroup$ I just saw this. I see there are many "deleted" rooms, but they are still showing in the hamSE room list. Why? A bug? $\endgroup$
    – Mike Waters
    Commented Jul 24 at 14:18
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    $\begingroup$ @MikeWaters I do not see any bug. Using the button on the bottom right, I can choose to show or hide the frozen and deleted rooms. $\endgroup$
    – Martin Sleziak
    Commented Jul 24 at 15:01
  • $\begingroup$ I am vehemently opposed to hamSE chat being arbitrarily closed after 14 days. :-( Many other sites do not have this limitation. Please remove it ASAP. $\endgroup$
    – Mike Waters
    Commented Aug 14 at 18:48
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    $\begingroup$ @MikeWaters I tried to explain to the best of my abilities that it works for this site exactly the same as for the other sites. But I do not actually see problem - this happens only very rarely (only if somebody starts another room). And the room can be easily unfrozen. $\endgroup$
    – Martin Sleziak
    Commented Aug 15 at 15:04
  • $\begingroup$ Perhaps some other sites, but not the ones I visited lately. I had just posted in a chat (sorry, forget which one) where there had been no activity for 37 days. Also, why did hamSE's chat suddenly get reduced to two weeks?! $\endgroup$
    – Mike Waters
    Commented Aug 15 at 20:09
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I don't know what might be up about the timeout, but I've unfrozen the room.

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  • $\begingroup$ Thank you, Kevin! :-) $\endgroup$
    – Mike Waters
    Commented May 24 at 22:01
  • $\begingroup$ Maybe @jnat can extend the timeout for us. I posted something on an SE chat yesterday about this. Before my post there, it had been well over 50 days since the last post. $\endgroup$
    – Mike Waters
    Commented May 25 at 18:57

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