Declined Terms of service update regarding retention of account.

[Lee_scar]

It has become common practice for larger sites to lock down or even delete an account that has not logged in for a period of six or more months.

I believe we should adopt this or some other method of cleaning up the user roster as it is full of bots and inactive users that have long since abandoned not having logged in since 2012 and 2013.

While I do not want to discourage a user from coming back to the profile I see no reason for the site to maintain updates such as birthdays and alerts for these inactive users that may still be parsing. Might even be other possible things that could lighten the site.

One solution because of the overhaul would be an automated message sent to the emails of the accounts truant a login for a certain period of time. Lets say six to ten months. The notifying email informing the user will have one month to log into their account before deactivation and archival of the username.
(Because our forums use a live scripting user count, deleting an account would screw things up bad converse to archiving the account)

Some sites do not even give the courtesy of a warning email and simply lock the accounts and make them unavailable for retrieval.

 

[myusername22]

It has become common practice for larger sites to lock down or even delete an account that has not logged in for a period of six or more months.

I believe we should adopt this or some other method of cleaning up the user roster as it is full of bots and inactive users that have long since abandoned not having logged in since 2012 and 2013.

While I do not want to discourage a user from coming back to the profile I see no reason for the site to maintain updates such as birthdays and alerts for these inactive users that may still be parsing. Might even be other possible things that could lighten the site.

One solution because of the overhaul would be an automated message sent to the emails of the accounts truant a login for a certain period of time. Lets say six to ten months. The notifying email informing the user will have one month to log into their account before deactivation and archival of the username.
(Because our forums use a live scripting user count, deleting an account would screw things up bad converse to archiving the account)

Some sites do not even give the courtesy of a warning email and simply lock the accounts and make them unavailable for retrieval.

Why is this necessary? If you only archive the accounts they will take up the same amount of memory memory usage anyway wont they? I don't see this as necessary so long as they are still using up the same resources. If the largest concern is birthdays, maybe we could just altar the website to only display birthdays of people who have been here in the past 6 months?

 

[Ltin]

Why is this necessary? If you only archive the accounts they will take up the same amount of memory memory usage anyway wont they? I don't see this as necessary so long as they are still using up the same resources. If the largest concern is birthdays, maybe we could just altar the website to only display birthdays of people who have been here in the past 6 months?

I think he is referring to deleting accounts.

 

[Willchill]

I don't think there's as much of an issue with storage space on the site to call for something like this.

 

[Lee_scar]

Its not so much in regards to storage space, but setting a new and more firm professional standard of account management.
We are in fact working towards some attempt to accomplish something with a long standard of life well beyond the former timeframe we have stood, no?

While again as stated before it may or may not affect the overall amount of storage as deleting a user might cause corruption. (I'm unsure if this is true, as the structure shows a live count to users and outright deleting one may alter current users, posts and structure causing errors.)

There should be a weight and cleanliness when it comes to the 'active' users.

A user is not really a part of the 'community' if they have not logged in to the account in year or mores time, therefore your account should be forfeit. The name however reserved for the occasion on some blue moon one should wish to come back.


The counter argument is that if a user were to come back from a two year hiatus out of a curious motive only to come upon a reactivate your account, etc they may lose interest.

Continuing on with the matter in point.

Currently the forums feel like a ghost town, same old faces, with a few rare ones speckled here and there. On the off chance you catch a very old face online.

As well as bot accounts are still active and not locked immediately, at least not outwardly appearing to be locked.

 

[Hunter]

there's an addon for showing only birthdays of active users which would kill a symptom of it
if the username is taken and inactive, we could pull a mojang and replace it with Guest#### where # is a number, freeing up the name

 

[Lee_scar]

freeing up the name

I would rather not free up the name to prevent clones from futures past

 

[Theodorre]

Haha, I see where this is coming from, especially as there is a 'Theo' registered on the forums despite not having logged in since 2013 meaning I had to take 'Theoo' >.>

 

[parquette]

But what happens if they eventually decide they want to come back, and find that their account had been deleted? Then they have to go through the process of making a whole another account. This just makes more hastle and aggravation, and what if they had to leave to go overseas somewhere for a long period of time and couldn't take their computer?

 

[Txboy1234]

But what happens if they eventually decide they want to come back, and find that their account had been deleted? Then they have to go through the process of making a whole another account. This just makes more hastle and aggravation, and what if they had to leave to go overseas somewhere for a long period of time and couldn't take their computer?

Exactly, there are those of us who do lurk the forums occasionally and sometimes I do make post, it would be disappointing not logging into my account after awhile and find it deleted.

 

[Lee_scar]

That's the double edge on this matter, while it makes a fair place for dead accounts to get freed up for users that want to use the name.
It then on the other hand prevents long term returns.

The solution would be a possible way to again sent out an email alert to users, reporting the account will be disabled, then deletes should they not log in within X time.

Situational example:

User Frogtosser has no logged in for the past 6 months, an alert is sent to their email(which they used to verify the account)
After the alert the username is put on a backlist.
After 6 more months or no activity the account is then purged and reassigned as GuestXXXX

 

[Theodorre]

But what happens if they eventually decide they want to come back, and find that their account had been deleted? Then they have to go through the process of making a whole another account. This just makes more hastle and aggravation, and what if they had to leave to go overseas somewhere for a long period of time and couldn't take their computer?

You can normally tell if they're not going to return if they last logged in the same day they made the account - which IS the case in a lot of these usernames, including 'Theo'. I mean, if someone made their account on, let's say, 22nd of April 2013, and last logged in on the 22nd of April 2013, and never made any posts/received ratings, it seems extremely unlikely they're going to return in 2015.

 

[Ceres]

Usually someone who disappears for six months (or more) without a trace intends on leaving, permanently. There's only a few cases where someone has popped their head up and surprised everyone with a sudden return from their global absence.

It's a bit ironic how I'm agreeing since my account would technically "fall on the chopping block," as they say.

 

[Matt_Allen]

I see no purpose for this personally, if you end up removing someones name and changing it to a guest account, we lose all archives, all of the great history that this community has. I'm not entirely sure what the problem with having inactive accounts is to be honest. Sure there are bots, and long lost members who were just here to make a ban appeal, but you're also throwing everyone in there who was a great face for this community. If anyone (like myself) is to return, what will be lost? Surely more than just a name. Or perhaps I don't quite understand the suggestion.

 

[Lee_scar]

I see no purpose for this personally, if you end up removing someones name and changing it to a guest account, we lose all archives, all of the great history that this community has. I'm not entirely sure what the problem with having inactive accounts is to be honest. Sure there are bots, and long lost members who were just here to make a ban appeal, but you're also throwing everyone in there who was a great face for this community. If anyone (like myself) is to return, what will be lost? Surely more than just a name. Or perhaps I don't quite understand the suggestion.

Its more like a system to give more weight to just leaving on a whim, the intention of a community is to keep an active base of users and prevent and entice users to not cycle in and out years in rotation.

If one isn't going to bother making a new account or at least going to some means to keep the account active then truly the ideal of being a 'part'of the community is a whim, not a want.

Using a system where user Cheezburger gets his account transformed into guestxxxx the forums will tag his former name and slot it into the 'member' portion.
Using this no memories are lost and an account can be reclaimed after proven effort.

 

[lizthehedgehog]

Usually someone who disappears for six months (or more) without a trace intends on leaving, permanently. There's only a few cases where someone has popped their head up and surprised everyone with a sudden return from their global absence.

It's a bit ironic how I'm agreeing since my account would technically "fall on the chopping block," as they say.

What about those who lose internet access :c

 

[Lee_scar]

What about those who lose internet access :c

Hence the ideal the system would send a message to players emails. That is given a person signed up with a legitimate and still active email.

 

[Ltin]

What about The One? We Don't want him to lose his account.

 

[Matt_Allen]

I have another problem with this suggestion, if someone is able to take a username that has been deactivated, what is stopping them from impersonating someone who was a big member of the community? For example, someone could have taken my account name while I was gone for 2 years, and trolled with my name.

 

[Lee_scar]

See that's the issue really, there needs to be a proper system and balances

 

[cheatyface]

The real reason for locking inactive accounts is that bots will regularly sign up to sites and sit inactive for months so that they don't look like bots. Eventually they activate, and do whatever it is they do. Some spam posts about silly shit with links to websites that may be hazardous or may just be advertising, making the bot owner money. Others collect any kind of data that they have access too, because information makes for informed decisions. Others still may look for ways to attack the site, and are intended to look like legitimate users coming from an ip that's associated with an account that signed up a year ago.

The point is that this is done to prevent the annoyance and possible harm from bots. If we're looking to become a huge community, then we may well be such a target. There may be other ways as well, though, and may in fact be some in place already. I think this is a legitimate suggestion, but one that only admins would have the information to weigh in on.

 

[Malcovent]

As I see it, it's easy enough to delete the user's but we can't reserve the name, though given that obvious abuse of These names would result in punishment I can't see it necessarily being an issue.

Nice idea to clean up the forum a bit though. And shouldn't be hard to do. GmK, Baker93 superstein thoughts?

 

[Malcovent]

Declined for the time being - Whilst we may do this further down the Line, at this stage I think it'll introduce more problems than It'll solve.