About and FAQ

Stirkbin is a small paste site for code, logs, and notes. Paste some text, get a URL, send it to someone. There are no accounts.

Is this a research project?

Yes. Stirkbin is also an experimental service studying how people and automated tools use public posting services. Submitted content and request metadata are logged. The research and privacy notice has the details. Do not paste secrets or personal information.

Is this the old Stirkbin?

No. This site operates under new ownership and is not a continuation or archive of any earlier service with this name. Old paste links do not work here.

Who can see my paste?

Anyone. A listed paste shows up in the recent list, the archive, search, and the feeds. Individual paste pages ask search engines not to index them, but do not rely on that.

What does unlisted mean?

An unlisted paste stays out of the recent list, the archive, search, feeds, and sitemaps, and is reachable by its link. It is not private: anyone with the link can read it, links get passed around, and it is logged and archived under the research notice like any other paste. There are no private pastes, passwords, or burn-after-reading here, because the operator can read everything that is submitted.

How long do pastes stay up?

Until they are deleted, unless you pick an expiry of 10 minutes, 1, 24, or 48 hours, 1 week, or 1 month when you submit. Expiry and deletion remove public access. The privacy notice explains what is retained privately.

How do I edit or delete a paste?

If you submitted from this browser with JavaScript on, it saved a token and you can use the Edit link on the paste or My pastes. Without JavaScript, the paste page shows the token once right after you submit. API clients get a deleteToken in the response, and curl gets it in the X-Delete-Token response header. It is only given out once and cannot be recovered.

What happens when I edit?

Each save is a new revision at the same link. The page keeps a revision list and shows what changed between any two. Old revisions stay public until the paste is deleted or expires, so editing does not take something back. Expiry stays what it was.

What is “Edit as new”?

It opens the form with the paste’s text and makes a separate paste with its own link and token. The new paste links back to the original, and the original lists its listed forks. If the original is unlisted, the new paste does not link to it.

What are the limits?

A paste can be up to 64 KiB of text and a title up to 120 characters. Writes are limited to 20 a minute per visitor.

Which languages are highlighted?

C, Diff, Go, INI / systemd, JavaScript, JSON, Markdown, nginx, PHP, Python, Shell, SQL, YAML. Highlighting only colors text on the page. Nothing you paste is run, and HTML shows up as text.

What can I do with a paste page?

Click a line number to get a link to that line, and shift-click another to link a range like #L12-L20. Wrap lines stops long lines scrolling sideways. Raw gives you the plain text and Download saves it as a file. Copy buttons appear when JavaScript is on.

What do the view counts count?

One view per visitor, per paste, per day, for the page or raw text. Crawlers that name themselves are left out. Other automated clients are not, so treat the number as a rough guide.

Can I follow new pastes?

Yes. There is an Atom feed of recent listed pastes, and one per language from the archive.

Can I script it?

Yes. curl --data-binary @file https://stirkbin.com/ prints the URL. The command line section of the docs has a shell function you can copy, and the API documentation covers the rest.

Something here should not be public.

Use the Report link at the bottom of the paste, or mail [email protected] with the paste URL.