As a webdev (albeit a noob) I just leave the scroll bar to its own devices with ONE EXCEPTION.

I hate the "pop" you get when the scroll bar isn't there, and then suddenly there is enough content to scroll and the scroll bar shifts everything to the left. It's not easy to account for for a given page when that may or may not occur when say you show some new content and then suddenly things shift left.

It's a pain visually so I just force it to appear regardless.

I've had luck with:

overflow-y:scroll;