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[Mimitchi]

It's the start of a new year for TSS, so I have done some forum maintenance. This maintenance included deleting all accounts not activated before October 2007. This removed about 180 inactive accounts and has left only 30 accounts yet to be activated. With the 30 remaining I have sent reminder notifications.

An account not activated is an account that has not completed full registration via the email confirmation process.

If you registered before Oct 2007 without activating the account and you just happened to be showing up here after so many months you'll need to re-register.

That is all.

[Mametchi]

It's the start of a new year for TSS, so I have done some forum maintenance. This maintenance included deleting all accounts not activated before October 2007. This removed about 180 inactive accounts and has left only 30 accounts yet to be activated. With the 30 remaining I have sent reminder notifications.

An account not activated is an account that has not completed full registration via the email confirmation process.

If you registered before Oct 2007 without activating the account and you just happened to be showing up here after so many months you'll need to re-register.

That is all.

So,what you're saying is,people who haven't activated their account better activate it or they're kicked out of TSS.

[Mimitchi]

Not at all, Mametchi. "Kicked out of TSS" would imply they were a part of it in the first place.

Inactive accounts are people that signed up but didn't finish registration. Thus they could not log in or even post under that account. In fact inactive signups aren't recognized in anyway until they complete the registration. Just like all 'guest' users they can look through the board, but they cannot post. This is not unusual for chatboards. Email verification is required to fully open an account here; this reduces the spammers to nearly 0 - we've had only two actually get through in over a year.

That's the first time I did the inactive account removal and it's not going to be a more then an annual thing (aka it wont take place again till end of the year next year).

It's pretty safe to say someone that opened an account Nov 2006 (the very month the BBS opened, over a year ago) is very likely not interested anymore. When the deletions occurred they were sent emails, so it's not like they weren't informed.

Additionally, once a month I have the system send out reminders to people who haven't activated their account.

Anyone who had their account removed, as my example goes for the people that registered in November 2006, would have had 11 reminders. Plus the final email letting them know they've been removed.

Many of the accounts were duplicates of people typoing their email address or spammers. Some others were people who don't like sharing their email address (even though it's kept completely private) so they decide it's not worth signing up.

Does this give you a better understanding of things?

[Mametchi]

Yes.

[i luv tamas!!!!!!]

Mametchi please dont spam. You could put: Yes I understand or something like that.
It just clogges up the board. If u have any questions, read the rules or PM Mimitchi or Lord Monkey.
Thanks! ILT

[Mimitchi]

ILT replying "yes" is not spamming. He was responding to my question. The question was left open in case he needed further clarification on how this membership cleanup worked.

Spamming according to dictionary.com: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=spam&x=0&y=0


On another note, ILT, telling another member to read the forum rules is actually against the forum guidelines:

Wannabe Administrators or Moderators
Users may not play the roll of an Administrator or Moderator if they are not really an Administrator or Moderator. If another user has broken a rule, send a private message directly to the Administrators or Moderators of the forum.

If/when a situation comes up that a member needs to be reminded of the rules, we generally handle that privately as to not embarrass the person.

[Mametchi]

Mimitchi,I'm not a boy.I'm not mad though,it's a common error when I forget to put my gender up.I think I'll go change my profile.

[Kokuma]

We have 58 members that have made at least 20 posts. If person is active here in the boards he or she posts 20 times in couple of weeks or even shorter time, so I'll take it that we have 58 active members which is about 11% of the whole member amount.

Maybe 1/2 of the rest 89% of the members are ones who have wrote 0 posts. In other words, propably they haven't used real existing email address and can't activate their accounts or they have lost interest in posting before they have even start.

I have suggestion that these "posts: 0" member accounts are removed after 500 days (1,3 years) from the last time they have been active in the boards (reading, reforming profile etc.).
This way we get the members number drop down more near the number of "real" active users and the usernames of these "zero accounts" get to be freed again for new users to take.

That might sound cruel, but in my way of view inactive member who haven't been any way active in boards for over an year are assumingly not interested in the subject anymore and are not going to start use their unused accounts after that long time.
If they want to start posting in TSS, they can create new account (propably with some nickname that was "freed" from inactive account - and that time with real existing email address..) and start their time-spending in TSS from "empty table" (or howelse the proverb goes in english...)

Yes, we have members here who have been away almost an year, but in these cases they were active in the first place and made comeback. Member who hasn't use his/her account at all isn't going to start post in TSS after year and 4 months of total inactiveness.

[Mimitchi]

Maybe 1/2 of the rest 89% of the members are ones who have wrote 0 posts. In other words, probably they haven't used real existing email address and can't activate their accounts or they have lost interest in posting before they have even start.

Actually only 42 members are inactive (not verified their account via email).

I appreciate your suggestions Kokuma, but I have no intentions at this time of removing activated accounts with 0 posts. There are many people who come here to read who do not post (for whatever reason) and I would not want to be so harsh as to remove them. I have no problem with them being members and being lurkers.

This is not to say your idea is not a good one. If the board were 5+ years old, I could definitely see the kind of cleanup you are suggesting happening, but as it is TSS is too young to do such cleaning as of yet.

There are two main reasons why I wouldn't wanna delete someones account that has been activated.

The activation process is not one that is 'easy' - a person that goes through not only signing up but activating their account via their real email address must be someone who actually wanted an account. Forcing them to use a real email address pretty much removes the probability that the person is an advertiser or spammer.

If they didn't really want to sign up, they would not have because they'd have no reason to do so. Someone who comes here for information can get what they need without signing up. 'Guests' can freely look through the forum to find any information they need without signing up. So someone who signs up definitely wanted to sign up.

I would not want to remove them unless they made the request to do so. Or as stated above.. the age of the board warranted such a cleanup to occur. But right now TSS is young and still getting on it's feet slowly.

I have an account at another forum (an mmorpg site) that I've posted exactly 17 posts at in over 5 years, most of those posts from over 2 years ago. I read the forums at that site almost daily. I would be rather upset if they removed my account because I wasn't an active poster.

Just looking at the activity we can tell that there's less then 100 people that are really active posters on the board. To me that's okay because perhaps someday some of those lurkers will feel comfortable enough to say hello to us. Until then they can keep reading silently

I appreciate all the good suggestions and I hope you don't take it personally that I don't use them. I mostly think it's just a bit too early in the life of this board to use them as of yet.

 

[Kokuma]

I appreciate your suggestions Kokuma, but I have no intentions at this time of removing activated accounts with 0 posts. There are many people who come here to read who do not post (for whatever reason) and I would not want to be so harsh as to remove them. I have no problem with them being members and being lurkers.

I figured this out 5mins after last modification of my post. I thought to delete my post but then I realized some ppl might have already read it and deleting it might cause "conversation" 

i'm feeling myself mostly stupid now..