Devclub

The Burn Box is a chat channel in DevTalk and is a casual chat where the entire contents of the channel are deleted daily. The channel typically makes up somewhere between 40% and 70% of DevTalk's total message activity daily, and frequently has the highest number of unique members chatting in it. It is often used for both off topic and on topic conversations, and is well suited for conversations that don't need to remain in the permanent history of the community.

History

The original purpose of the burn box was to give space to heavier topics and prevent more negative attitudes and ideations from finding a permanent residence in the community. It was intended to be a place for DevTalk members to vent their frustrations about their personal or professional life, knowing that it would not be accessible later, either to remind them or be referenced later, while still permitting users to talk to other community members about it. The concept of such a channel was inspired by "vent" sections in forums, taking the idea a step further and permanently removing the messages from the community's history.

In its original incarnation, Plum would delete the message content of the burn box. Users of the channel could witness this happening live, and would continue to speak through the deletion process, prolonging the sudden appearance and disappearance of the message. Users would try to compete with Plum in order to 'prevent it from burning' as a game. This interaction inspired a burn box minigame where the intention was to 'fight' Plum and prevent her from completely burning the burn box. The DevTalk burn box minigame was created in response to these interactions.