Non-Active Members

The Great Hairy · Post by **The Great Hairy** » Sun Feb 06, 2005 6:40 pm

Gidday all,

I was having a little bit of a browse through the member's list recently, and I was checking out some of the names whom I didn't recognise. In some cases, some people haven't posted here for several years. So are non-active accounts purged? Is there any monitoring on these older, non-active members?

Cheers,
TGHO

CM · Post by CM » Sun Feb 06, 2005 6:54 pm

From what i know many people register but do not post. Lurk really. Around a year and a half ago Buck did a system purge or members and the website lost i don't know 2 or 3 thousand people. However before that he asked people who do use their nicks to pm him.

Personally i think another system wipe would be good. But it is up to buck to decide.

Luis Antonio · Post by **Luis Antonio** » Sun Feb 06, 2005 7:15 pm

Perhaps and automatic exclusion sistem... like, if you dont use the forums (not even to read the discussions) for nine months, you receive a mail notification to re-activate your account. If you dont go online, your account vanishes after a month, or sg...

CM · Post by CM » Sun Feb 06, 2005 7:21 pm

Buck may have something like that already inbuilt with Vbulliten. But i mean what is the difference? Why should the number of posters matter?

Personally i think more should be done to advertise GB on non-bioware games. We got people here who regularly check for Bio-ware games. Other games do not get the same member attraction. That should be the emphasis.

Sorry to go off topic.

The Great Hairy · Post by **The Great Hairy** » Tue Feb 08, 2005 5:10 pm

I'm more thinking of people with 500+ posts, but the last post was in 2002 or something like that.

Cheers,
TGHO

Vicsun · Post by **Vicsun** » Tue Feb 08, 2005 6:03 pm

What incentive is there to delete unused accounts?

CM · Post by CM » Tue Feb 08, 2005 6:09 pm

Well first those people do come around still and do lurk. There is no need to delete those acounts.

Post by **BuckGB** » Tue Feb 08, 2005 10:16 pm

There is no real advantage to pruning unused accounts, although I did go through and delete a few thousand of the oldest ones about six months ago. I can always go through the database again, but since removing the old ones doesn't really help the site's performance, I don't see any good reason to do so.

Additionally, removing users that have posted in the past actually has a few disadvantages tied to it. First, all of their past posts are automatically assigned to "Guest", meaning there is no way to distinguish a thousand posts from one another if they were all posted by different people that have since been deleted. Secondly, the board's statistics become inaccurate and I have to manually recompile all of them. Although the rebuilding process is automated, it's server intensive and takes a LOT of time to run its course. Third, it causes the user to have to register again if/when they choose to come back, which may keep them from posting again out of frustration.

Unless there's some sort of detrimental effect to having unused accounts that I'm unaware of, I don't think another user pruning is really needed at the current time.

oozae · Post by **oozae** » Thu Feb 10, 2005 12:07 am

My sentiments exactly

ik911 · Post by **ik911** » Thu Feb 10, 2005 9:48 am

[QUOTE=Buck Satan]Unless there's some sort of detrimental effect to having unused accounts that I'm unaware of, I don't think another user pruning is really needed at the current time.[/QUOTE]

Can one choose a name that's already picked when registering? If not, that's a limitation to new members. It's a shame when one chooses a name that's already in use by an account that isn't used for a like a year.

Besides, one doesn't lurk for a year, without posting, with a username. Creating a username wouldn't make much sense if you're only planning to lurk around, right?

But it isn't a real strong argument for going through all that trouble.

The Great Hairy · Post by **The Great Hairy** » Thu Feb 10, 2005 4:31 pm

When I posed the question of this thread I wasn't really thinking much about it, just curious. However one little thought has popped into my head - is the number of active members known as compared to total members? I would think advertisers would be more interested in active than total...

Just a thought! I'm speculating only.

Cheers,
TGHO

werebeargoddess · Post by **werebeargoddess** » Mon Feb 14, 2005 8:54 pm

Yeah, I don't mean to spam or anything, but from what I've been able to tell, anly about a quarter of the members, maybe les, continue to post regularly. The other three quarters or so might post once or twice, then leave (or lurk), or just leave (or lurk), whithout ever posting. Just my thoughts.

Curry · Post by **Curry** » Sun Feb 20, 2005 3:49 am

Well I read these forums every day and I've been registered here for years. My post count is only a bit more than 200 because I just don't feel like spamming

Adahn · Post by **Adahn** » Tue Feb 22, 2005 3:19 am

Well, technically people can lurk without registering can't they? What's the use of having an account if you shouldn't post? Perhaps the smartest thing would be to allow "Guests" to browse around the forums, but not post. If they want to post, then register simply, right?

Vicsun · Post by **Vicsun** » Tue Feb 22, 2005 11:21 am

[QUOTE=Adahn]Perhaps the smartest thing would be to allow "Guests" to browse around the forums, but not post. If they want to post, then register simply, right?[/QUOTE]
I believe that's how it currently works

Adahn · Post by **Adahn** » Tue Feb 22, 2005 2:35 pm

[QUOTE=Vicsun]I believe that's how it currently works

[/QUOTE]

Oh, well, nothing then ^.^