Inactive Accounts - Delete or not to Delete?

[imitateslife]

In two days, we do our first archiving sweep. I'm surprisingly nervous about it. I know that logically, I shouldn't be. Some of these members haven't been active parts of the site since September. I've sent out a mass email to everyone and my co-admin made a reminder announcement today. And even though archiving is less permanent than deleting, I'm dreading it because before mysteriously disappearing, some of these people were integral parts of my website and I got attached. They were my online friends. And try as I might to separate my personal feelings from my responsibilities as an admin, it's hard. Don't get me wrong. I'm still going through with my archiving project in order to clean up the site. But just because I'm doing my job and hoping that it's nothing personal, it still feel weirdly personal anyways.

Does anyone ever feel like that when archiving, doing activity checks, or deleting accounts?

[VIVE LE REPUBLIQUE]

The site I admin on is only new at the moment, not even a month old. But we already have 100+ accounts. In about 3 months, we should be doing an Activity Check, and when that time comes we will most probably send a Mass Email and/or PM out to warn them. Naturally, some accounts will most probably be deleted in the check, but if it makes the forum look fresh and active, it has to be done. If a forum has 200+ accounts and only 30 logging in a day, then, to me personally (and I mean no offence to anyone who thinks otherwise), the site doesn't look as fresh as a forum with only 100 accounts with 70 logging in. I probably won't be deleting threads though, just moving them to an archive. We don't delete threads - it's the members copyright to have them available if/when they decide to come back. And if not, it's always a pleasure to look back on old threads and see how you've improved as an RP'er since then, and look back on old plots and... remember. You know?

imitateslife - It will probably be like that for me too. I get really attached to all the people I RP with and to have to delete accounts and archive threads will be heartbreaking </3 but, like you said, it's nothing personal. If the members come back, fair enough! I hope I don't have to do it, and thankfully I won't have to for a while yet.

[HoudiniDerek]

Jan 15, 2013 10:56:37 GMT -8 imitateslife said:

In two days, we do our first archiving sweep. I'm surprisingly nervous about it. I know that logically, I shouldn't be. Some of these members haven't been active parts of the site since September. I've sent out a mass email to everyone and my co-admin made a reminder announcement today. And even though archiving is less permanent than deleting, I'm dreading it because before mysteriously disappearing, some of these people were integral parts of my website and I got attached. They were my online friends. And try as I might to separate my personal feelings from my responsibilities as an admin, it's hard. Don't get me wrong. I'm still going through with my archiving project in order to clean up the site. But just because I'm doing my job and hoping that it's nothing personal, it still feel weirdly personal anyways.

Does anyone ever feel like that when archiving, doing activity checks, or deleting accounts?

I don't feel like that when archiving something.  As long as it is still there for the members to view, I have no problem archiving.  I usually let them know in advance too, so they can make it active again if they want before I archive.

I do feel somewhat odd doing activity checks, which could lead to deleting accounts.  I have yet to do it, but I am thinking I might have to start soon.  The forum is pretty active, so I might wait, but if it dwindles again, that might be the way to go.

Good luck on what you decide.

[imitateslife]

Jan 18, 2013 15:32:30 GMT -8 HoudiniDerek said:

Jan 15, 2013 10:56:37 GMT -8 imitateslife said:

In two days, we do our first archiving sweep. I'm surprisingly nervous about it. I know that logically, I shouldn't be. Some of these members haven't been active parts of the site since September. I've sent out a mass email to everyone and my co-admin made a reminder announcement today. And even though archiving is less permanent than deleting, I'm dreading it because before mysteriously disappearing, some of these people were integral parts of my website and I got attached. They were my online friends. And try as I might to separate my personal feelings from my responsibilities as an admin, it's hard. Don't get me wrong. I'm still going through with my archiving project in order to clean up the site. But just because I'm doing my job and hoping that it's nothing personal, it still feel weirdly personal anyways.

Does anyone ever feel like that when archiving, doing activity checks, or deleting accounts?

I don't feel like that when archiving something.  As long as it is still there for the members to view, I have no problem archiving.  I usually let them know in advance too, so they can make it active again if they want before I archive.

I do feel somewhat odd doing activity checks, which could lead to deleting accounts.  I have yet to do it, but I am thinking I might have to start soon.  The forum is pretty active, so I might wait, but if it dwindles again, that might be the way to go.

Good luck on what you decide.

Thanks, HoudiniDerek. I did my archiving sweep yesterday and it didn't feel as bad as I thought it would. It still feels bizarre because one of the girls who never came back used to be on staff. She told me last year that she didn't think she should continue being on staff, since she didn't have the time... I just didn't think she would leave altogether. I didn't delete anything, though, which I think was the right thing to do. There's a small, angry bit of me that wanted to delete her stuff because she ditched us, but professionalism obviously won out. 

How often do you conduct activity checks? And how do you go about doing them? 

[suchadork]

for RP Forums I think it is better to delete them and so usually do some sort of monthly activity check involving them linking to a thread they've posted in the last month or just signing it when they've logged on. give them a week or so to sign it and alert everyone by pm and mass email and at the end of it delete the accounts that haven't signed. if you've got like 200+ members and only 40 are signing in then that's a high number of inactive accounts and it does make the site look less active, whereas if you've got 40 accounts and around all of them sign in daily or whatever, that looks pretty impressive. (

edit:

also the easiest way i've found to do them is when you start the activity check post a list of every account on the board, and when the people sign it with their account names or whatever, remove that persons accounts from the list. when the activity check ends the only people left in the list are the people who didn't sign, so you can just go through and look for them to delete them, whereas if it were done the opposite way you must go through yourself and work out who is missing (:

[Usiel]

I have a question to admins who have ran RP sites.

To those who have ran RP sites, how long have your sites existed before they died out? I'm asking those who delete inactive accounts, people who take off.

If you have ran a website for over 2 years with this kind of practice I commend you because you need to make people feel welcomed. If you randomly delete accounts ever so often to those that Roleplay and then disappear for awhile, it sends a wrong message. RPers move from one site to another and if they really like your site they will come back.

Imagine putting heart and soul into a Roleplay. Imagine making a city, making buildings for that city, creating a plot, and then helping others move along that plot. Then imagine something happening to you, a family member, no internet access, something. Imagine it's for a little while. Wouldn't you like to go back and know that your work is still there? If the account was deleted then it's like "Well thanks a lot for not making me feel welcomed".

That's how I see deleting accounts. Deleting 0 post accounts I can understand, especially if they have been around for awhile. I also understand deleting unactivated accounts. Deleting accounts of people because they hadn't posted within a time frame? That's a little harsh, and a little rude.

Just my feel on it.

[Nori]

That's one of the reasons I don't like doing scheduled activity checks. I keep track of my members and when they have last logged in or the last time I saw their IP address on the guest list. Giving them a few months before an email that then allows them another few months I don't believe is too strict a time line, not to mention considering there is a 'holiday/going away' board to post to and that they could IM me (and I make it very clear that anyone can contact me about anything at any time) anything of that like.

I've run a place for almost 9 years now and we're still going with new people coming in every once and a while. Not the busiest site around but because of that any of these new people are given attention and included immediately in the community. Makes it really hard to delete inactive people due to that as well, since everyone is considered a friend. Except the 0 post accounts of course, those I don't normally give quite as long to come back, especially if the individualized email is not responded to within a month.

[Skindstad]

I have VIP members that is members who have been with us from the beginning or been a devoted staff member but then had RL get in the way and has chosen to leave us. They will never be deleted because they have stuck around for so long and they tend to pop in and say hi from time to time.

Then there are the members who come in makes a character post for a month and never show up again. Those are the ones that ends up getting deleted.

The there are the regular members who post hard for a couple of months then they might only turn up once a week or something. They don't get deleted.

I have activity tests twice a year and we have been around for over five years. I think it is about knowing what kind of people you are dealing with. I have been an admin for 8 years and I can detect which people who ends up sticking around even when RL sticks its face out and the others who test the forum out for a month only to vanish.

The first forum we started on we didn't have much check on who was active and who wasn't which ended with 500 accounts where we only had ten active members. I would rather have 50 accounts shown that are active than 500 accounts where only a fraction actually turns up. But I think it all comes down to the community and what kind of people. I took over after the original founder left us before then I had only managed the coding and layout but after I got in charge I soon found out that if you as admin isn't in contact with your members then it is harder to determine how to run your forum. I know I can be a bit bossy but my members know me and know that I am just passionate about the story we are creating.

And with that note I think I am starting to get off track so I will just shut up:-P

Sent from my GT-I9100 using proboards

[HoudiniDerek]

I don't do activity checks on any of my forums. I should probably start on the RP forums, but I don't see the need. I archive dead threads where nothing has been done in a year or more, but that's the extent. It's a lot of threads, but I prefer that to deletion so people can come back and know that they can still be a part of the forum and see the work they did. After all, life happens sometimes.

[Himms]

On the RP I'm on (it's about 6 years old). We- the staff- don't delete the accounts. Regardless of them be inactive/abandoned/or just plain discarded by the account creator. That right is left to the person who made the account and it's up to them to deleted if they wish to at any time.

I'm not a big fan of deleting accounts that have posted in threads/missions/eps. As to makes the threads look funny/incomplete and just plain ugly. But the other rule on the site is, if the members do delete their accounts their face claims are opened up again.

Even the non-active/ used accounts are left untouched.

And no It's not the RP link in my sig I'm talking about it's another RP I'm a member/Mod of.

[wildmaven]

Unfortunately, with the new v5, we won't be able to see IPs, so I'd be less likely to delete any account in the future. That way, when someone joins, I can search by IP (even though it never displays it) and it will show me any previous accounts they had. I used to just keep an IP list and, when a new member signed up, I would check it against my list to see if it was a member who had RPed with us before and if there were any issues. Now, if you delete their accounts, there's no way to tell.

[Supernova]

Well I have only been in charge of my RP board for a month xD I archive inactive threads and bring them back if the person who went away wants to post in it. My plan is to deactivate accounts every 2 months as I have had it where I couldn't get onto a forum for a month D=

[VOSSITY]

I personally don't believe in activity checks, how many sites die right after they host an activity check? too many. There's something about deleting accounts every month that just spells disaster for a forum (I'm mainly speaking towards role plays). I've been on many, many sites where they have activity checks as a mandatory, it could have been thriving before but then it just seems to wither away after the check has been done.

As an admin I don't delete threads or posts, I just archive them and I certainly don't delete accounts. However, I did come across one role play site a few days ago and it had over 1000 members but only about 10 were over all active. I believe this is the only time that one can delete accounts because it's a turn off to guests and potential members to see that. To me it is at least. The site's dedication was strong and it was a site that had been there for a long, long time- but it seems messy to look at that and because of the 1000+ inactive accounts I wouldn't be joining.

[commandersilverwolf]

Our forum has been around for over 2 years now and we are just about to do our first archive and member clean up. I help run an RP forum as our BIO (By Invitation Only) Section has grown to over 100 pages where most are inactive so we moved them to an archived sub board and made them read only allowing users to message us to move them back if they want. Prior notice was given so they had the chance to post in them before they were archived.

When it comes to users however we don't delete accounts of users that leave we let them do that themselves or if they would rather leave them we allow them to do so, so they may return one day. The cleanup we did recently was removing accounts that had no posts at all (Obviously taking into account those that had just joined) if a member has not been active in some time but has posted we see no reason to delete their account as a lot of our members are younger people and so are in school or work, etc

[Supernova]

Feb 18, 2008 21:18:05 GMT -8 Michelangelo "Spike" Scarlatti said:

I dont get whats the point of having this wicked high member count then you look at the boards post count and its no where even close to what amount of members you have
I prefer deleting than trying to look good

I agree a board I was part of said it had 326 members... only had 3 active ones >.>