Inactive Accounts - Delete or not to Delete?

[Ninjacorn]

I personally wouldn't delete them, unless they were causing lag or something. It's fun to see how the site used to be, and the people, and also, what if they forgot their password, then randomly found it and decided to get active again?

[ron2]

I guess that inactive accounts ( five and more month) need delete because forum base is limited.
But if profile inactive on the two days,one-two week i guess that this accounts don't need delete.

[Ravendolphin]

I personally would delete inactive accounts only if the member has been inactive for more than three months or earlier. Admins should give the member a warning before deleting their account. Maybe they might want to come back and get active again? They might not be able to get on every single day of their lives.

It's mostly about time here. Let them have time to log into their accounts and after a period of time where it seems like they will never come back, then the account should be deleted.

[whisker]

Feb 17, 2008 16:15:45 GMT -8 HoudiniDerek said:

[whisker]

Feb 17, 2008 16:15:45 GMT -8 HoudiniDerek said:

Feb 17, 2008 15:33:53 GMT -8 📚 Dianne 📚 said:

Sometimes I personally email them, especially if I have known them for some time or talk to them outside the forum in other ways, as I have done at times. Otherwise, I play the waiting game. Then, once I have determined that it is time to delete, I email the whole forum. This way it does not feel like I am singling out one member.

I like that reply, HoudiniDerek. Sounds like a good approach!

PS: I'm not managing quotes very well, am I!

[imitateslife]

I don't delete inactive accounts, simply because you never know when or if someone might come back. To be honest, I'm a bit of an optimist that way. However, my co-admin and I have decided that-- since its an RP board-- we will archive characters of members who have been inactive for six months or longer. This frees up our face-claim list for new members, but doesn't completely shut the door on old, inactive members. I tend to follow HoudiniDerek's approach. It's actually proved quite effective. For example: I hadn't heard from one of our members in something like five months. She hadn't been on IM or the board, so I finally got a hold of her through a third member. As it turns out, she had been ill and dealing with a lot of personal stuff in real life. We didn't delete her account and she came back to the site by the next month.

I'm also getting into the habit of sending out bi-monthly newsletters to members. In there, I include a reminder that characters of inactive members will be archived.

[sharon]

As for myself I try to avoid deleting accounts because If they put the effort to sign up in the first place...they had some sort of interest in joining. With that being said though I don't keep members accounts open if they have either never activated the account or if they have never even posted a single post. I do delete accounts that I've sent a personal email to and received a bounce back email.

[Arcane]

I've seen great forums and have been tempted to join, but decide against it the moment I see the admins delete inactive accounts often. If you're inactive for 3+ months, with a low post count, then you should be deleted without question - you haven't contributed enough to be given the benefit of the doubt. But many people forget their password, get grounded, get busy, or simply get bored with a site and want to take a break - they shouldn't be deleted within a week for it!

I go through my member list about every month and delete the accounts with 0 posts (unless they joined within a few days of the activity check); about every 3 months, I delete accounts with higher post counts; as for veteran members, however, I never delete their account out of respect for their contributions to the site. (My time estimates are just that - estimates. I don't run a regular schedule, I delete when I feel the need to delete.)

[The Joker]

I'd say delete them if it's been a long time and they've been inactive for say a month or so, and you're worried that people will come in thinking there are more people than are actually there. But like Arcane said, if it's someone that makes a lot of contributions then no it might not be too good of an idea. If they have no posts though then I can't see why not? Maybe keep their old stuff in an archive (if it was an rp). It wouldn't be much of a hassle for them to rejoin, all it takes is a few button presses and voila. If it's a discussion site then I'd be more hesitant on deleting accounts.

[ozwizard1]

I agree. If they're not going to post then why join?

I used to think a higher number of members was good but not any more.

Post or bugger off is my POV.

[Usiel]

I've ran my RP site for over 6 years, and we're going to our 7th year. The Website I run is a progressive RP, where you start weak, and then become strong later on. Members come, members go, that is a fact of any site. One thing I have learned for my site is that it is best not to delete inactive accounts because people tend to come back, a lot. I don't delete mainly because again it's a progressive site. It is best for someone to come back and know that their character they were working to become strong, and the Roleplay value that is associated with that character is still there.

I do however delete accounts that are older than a month and have no character. Those do get removed because they had plenty of time to make a character. Also recently we had a major problem with hotmail/msn/live/windows/outlook accounts so we had to do a purge of those accounts, and let our members know not to use them as it seemed easy to hack them.

That is how it is for my site at least. Other sites I understand why one must delete, especially if it's not a Character Progression site.

[imitateslife]

Jan 8, 2013 16:26:46 GMT -8 Arcane said:

I've seen great forums and have been tempted to join, but decide against it the moment I see the admins delete inactive accounts often. If you're inactive for 3+ months, with a low post count, then you should be deleted without question - you haven't contributed enough to be given the benefit of the doubt. But many people forget their password, get grounded, get busy, or simply get bored with a site and want to take a break - they shouldn't be deleted within a week for it!

I go through my member list about every month and delete the accounts with 0 posts (unless they joined within a few days of the activity check); about every 3 months, I delete accounts with higher post counts; as for veteran members, however, I never delete their account out of respect for their contributions to the site. (My time estimates are just that - estimates. I don't run a regular schedule, I delete when I feel the need to delete.)

The thing that gets me is over-frequent activity checks leading to account deletion. I used to be a part of a RL Disney RP that did activity checks so often, with little to no regard to how long the member had been a part of the forum, how many posts the member had, or any away messages posted by the member. I had to frequently recreate my account(s) because members were given three days to check in once every three weeks. I quit after my account was deleted while I was in recovery from major surgery that I had notified the admin about. As such, I'm not a fan of activity checks. However, I do like your something you said. I know that favoring veteran members in activity checks seems unfair, but on a website where someone has been a contributing-- even founding-- member for a long time, there's no need to punish them. Chances are, there's a good reason for their absence and they'll probably be back. And even if they're gone for good, if the person was instrumental to the website's history, it's nice to be able to look back through the archives and get all nostalgia-happy. 

[Nori]

I'm in favor of deleting inactive accounts for RP sites, but as mentioned before not unless they've been gone for a while. For members with 0 posts I give them a couple weeks before sending out an email with a reminder and a link back to the place. For others that have made a few contributions to the place I usually give at least a month before sending out a reminder email, 3 or 4 months again before I send a second one if I haven't seen any activity from them.

Too often I find members suddenly lose internet access for varying reasons thus why I don't really like using activity checks and give ample time for them to return. Like imitateslife mentioned in her post earlier I love keeping around older characters in an Archive section of some sort. That way, if someone does come back after a year or so they don't have to remake the characters that they would still like to use and everyone who leaves or grows tired of a character has the option to convert their creation to a site wide usable NPC.

Having that kind of history can really enrich a place and it only gets better with time!

[HoudiniDerek]

I have a rule that I will delete people because I will do a random activity check. However, I have not done so. I keep that rule in place in case I feel the urge to clean house one day and have a more representative nature of how many members I have. Even then, I would probably only delete those that had never posted, especially if they had been there for years and still had zero posts.

[Saxon]

Most of the time I delete inactive members after giving them one warning email per week. It's bothersome because so many inactive people join my websites and then leave their accounts to catch dust in a corner

I used to believe it was best to keep around all members to make the site seem more enticing but now I am caught in the middle what is wrong and what is right.