JCF has a lot of members. But how many members does it really have?

I think that inactive accounts should be deleted automatically after, say, 5 years, if they registered after the year 2005 or something along those lines.

It's flooding our member count and is quite annoying to find a single person in the member list with that many fake members and never-to-be-seen-again members to sort threw.

With spambots such as 496043289014534 and 612407776547, it's really not necessary to have those accounts even on here. If deleted, they won't be flooding the member list, and there is no advantage to have banned spambots who used the account once and won't ever use them again. If you really are having problems, ban the IP instead in the admin CP. They would just create another account anyway if you banned the one. So what's it matter, just delete the account... it's way easier.

I've never had a problem finding members, because the one I speak to regularly all post on the JCF from time to time.

Originally Posted by Hunter

What's the problem with having all those users? About inactive members, I have seen some people get active after not making a single post for years. Would you be happy if you leave the boards and when you return some day, you find your account's been deleted and you're to register again?

If I've been gone for over 5 years, yes, I think re-registering would be good. I'm not going to come back the same person I was 5 years ago. After such an amount of time, you should have to start over. They haven't been active for 5 years, I'm sure they would understand why they were deleted for inactivity. They shouldn't have an account that means nothing to anybody anymore. I doubt that they remember their password (or even username for that matter) and will be logging in after 7 or so years.

Originally Posted by Hunter

Since spambots've been banned, why bother to delete their accounts? They can't post or anything, can they?

They are flooding the member list.

I tend to use the member list quite a bit actually. People like Stijn who are always on, but tend to stay silent are hard to find in there when I need to contact them.


I think I'm fighting a losing battle here, though

(posting as myself, not as ubermoderator)

I'm in favour of deleting spam accounts, as there's no point leaving them around. All the spambots that I've spotted have just been permabanned anyway, and I'd be surprised if they ever logged in more than once.

I don't think that inactive user accounts should be deleted, without at least giving them a chance to reactivate them. Unused accounts are another matter - if someone's signed up but never actually done anything with their account, then it's unlikely that they'll ever use it.

I'm against any account purge that'll delete the posts made by that account (unless all their posts are spam).

Originally Posted by Torkell

I don't think that inactive user accounts should be deleted, without at least giving them a chance to reactivate them. Unused accounts are another matter - if someone's signed up but never actually done anything with their account, then it's unlikely that they'll ever use it.

I'm against any account purge that'll delete the posts made by that account (unless all their posts are spam).

I agree with both points. Also, if two accounts are registered at the same IP, how the most active account stays while the other one gets deleted?

If you want your old name, a name change is quite easy. Just ask.

Originally Posted by CrimiClown

I've never had a problem finding members, because the one I speak to regularly all post on the JCF from time to time.

And who would this special someone be?

Originally Posted by Dermo

I agree with both points. Also, if two accounts are registered at the same IP, how the most active account stays while the other one gets deleted?

Disagree, there's multiple ways in which different people could have legitimately registered with the same IP. The vast majority of ISPs run with DHCP (I get a very different IP address every time my ADSL connection drops). If you registered from school or university you'll almost certainly have been using a proxy server, and so share an IP with everyone else there.

I think the best solution would be to add an option to hide inactive users in the Members List. And possibly make it so that users can view members who made a post within the last month, week, year, etc. Not that any of this is really necessary. This community is tiny.