Config flag that hid chat messages still stored them, flooding unread counters

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A developer building a PHP-based chat feature for an HR system discovered that unread message badges kept reappearing on rooms even when no users were active. The root cause was a third-party chat library's 'showChannelMessages' config flag, which suppressed the display of system messages like channel-enter and channel-leave events but continued writing them to the database. A database query revealed that 59 of 64 rows in the messages table were system-generated entries, not human messages, making up 92% of stored data. The fix was a nine-line method override that prevented system messages from being inserted when the display flag was disabled. Two additional cleanups were also required: excluding existing system rows from unread counts and from search results to fully resolve the issue.

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