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I just went to post something to Ten-fold (the main chat room); specifically a bit of chat not suited to a post to the main site.

Ten-fold has been frozen for inactivity!

I put it down to the new "style", which hides the chat link away (I was going to use it several times in the past couple of weeks but didn't, for several reasons, including simply the difficulty of finding it on two occasions, and the sudden absence of anyone there for more than a couple of days on a couple more).

The last actual discussion there was between Andre Silva and myself (and gung earlier, on Dec 6) in the aftermath of the changes (where I complained about them); I suppose this is in the week after.

After that there was two consecutive posts by Theta30 (Dec 11, since removed), and then nothing.

That chat would be used less because of the changes was obvious to me as soon as I saw the new changes.

That it would simply die was not immediately obvious, but that's quite clearly what killed it. Aside from some discussion about disliking the changes in the days after they happened, no discussion has taken place in chat at all. Not a single conversation.

And now it's gone.

In my opinion, that's a pretty disastrous consequence of the change; we've gone from at least some discussion every few days to a frozen chat room that can't be posted in at all.

What can we do, if anything? [Individually, of course, I can post to meta.SO complaining about this outcome, but I expect that to be utterly useless; I think this is something that the mods ought to be weighing in on, collectively if possible.]

Should we care that now Ten-fold is suddenly so unused that it has automatically been frozen?

(should I add the support tag - since 'can we unfreeze?' could be a support question. I was tempted to add 'bug', but I don't know if you can call the awful consequences of a deliberate decision a bug)

[I find it difficult to express quite how bothered I am by the changes, to be honest. I've given it quite a few weeks and I don't have a single positive feeling about the changes. I think the site is substantially less pleasant now (of which this event is one symptom), to the extent that I'm pondering whether to simply withdraw my labor.]

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    $\begingroup$ Room unfrozen :) (15 days of inactivity is enough to close any chat room on the SE network) I agree with you that the new UI renders our chat rooms less visible. PS Sorry to post only a short comment, I only have an iPhone with me, not very handy for long reply. $\endgroup$ – chl Dec 24 '13 at 18:32
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    $\begingroup$ I agree. The changes are terrible. They make it considerably harder to figure out what is going on and harder to navigate. Also, the diamond being lit up is not very obvious. Should we raise the in the general site meta? $\endgroup$ – Peter Flom Dec 24 '13 at 18:49
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    $\begingroup$ @chl Thanks for that. $\endgroup$ – Glen_b Dec 24 '13 at 18:59
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    $\begingroup$ I'd like to see usage stats (or just site views) for meta as well (I think the same for making meta more hidden in the recent UI change). It is difficult to evaluate though in the context that the winter holidays bring less activity in general. $\endgroup$ – Andy W Dec 30 '13 at 12:58

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