Do you ban or delete inactive accounts on your forum?

[Dazzal]

Sept 13, 2020 8:06:18 GMT -8 Retread said:

Sept 13, 2020 7:46:19 GMT -8 Dazzal said:

Retread
Yes, disable/deactivate means the same thing to me. Sometimes I forget the term DISABLE. lol

Hey Dazzal, be aware that disabling an account removes the ability for the member to log into that account.

I do know that, as some have disabled me. The majority of my members are on other forums I visit, so they can always PM me.

[Lynx]

I tend to put inactive members into a hidden group after 3 months of no activity - but they can still log on and access what they can normally access (I don't restrict any boards on my forum based on that particular group).

If they still haven't logged on after 1 year, I then put a mandatory poll on my forum and get my members input - and either delete, or not delete, based off of majority vote. I typically let the poll run for 30 days - so everyone has a chance to log on and vote.

[ZandraJoi]

Sept 13, 2020 8:03:20 GMT -8 Retread said:

Sept 13, 2020 7:40:20 GMT -8 ZandraJoi said:

Btw, I like turtles too lol Did you get that idea from that kid on the news?

That's an old video and it spawned a meme, many years ago. knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-like-turtles

At the time, a typical random meaningless reply on a thread would be "I like turtles."

I never saw that video before. Thank you for taking the time to explain!

[Beckea]

I usually allow them to delete themselves -- if they feel like but usually do not delete/or ban unless necessary.  I delete if there the member has 0 posts for several months up to a year. Sometimes people take "breaks" from the Internet and so I assume they are on a break. But they can come and go as they please.

But 0 posts means to me they have no interest so usually I delete them but they are always welcome to come back.

[Trab]

I may only be in my earlier phases of being a mod, but if they hang around with 0 posts for at least 6 months and if people only registered then left a few minutes later, it's clear that they're not coming back, so I delete them for pure inactivity.

[Former Member]

I have voted for: "I delete their account after a certain amount of time." However, I wouldn't ban them or disable their accounts. I had one person joining 3 times, and never posted once, and I thought "why do you want to be part of my forum if you don't want to take part in the discussions?" So I deleted her again, 3x. I am sure they will get the message, and won't come back again, so no need for a ban.

I don't delete members who haven't come back in ages, but have contributed in the beginning. It would disrupt the flow of the threads for one thing, and for another... you never know why they are gone. Maybe some real life issues were more important than forums, and they might just decide to come back again.

I think the problem is that people are members of too many forums at the same time, and they get tired of having to say the same things in every forum because, lets face it, most general forums have the same topics, and it gets boring having to repeat yourself.

I also think that there are too many general forums, and that admins should think about how much joy they actually have, running their forums, and ask themselves if it wouldn't be better to join another forum as a member, and take their members with them. Joining 2 forums will most likely the best way to keep traffic up and running.
Unfortunately, most admins want to be "the boss", and can't be just a member. That's why there are so many forums. Everybody wants to go it alone.

[tvfans]

Sept 10, 2020 10:36:53 GMT -8 Retread said:

The reason I ask is that this was recently mentioned on the Support Board.

I can almost understand deleting inactive accounts, where no post was ever made. Then the member list would be shorter. But really, what does that matter?

I can't understand why it would be of any benefit to banning an inactive member. That seems hostile and punitive to me. Can anyone offer an explanation for this?

I had a lot of inactive members on my previous forum.  But I have noticed, the more members you have, the more you attract spammers.

I asked all of them if they were ok with me deleting their account.  They didn't get back to me.

I'm talking about members who hadn't been active for years due to work, other interests, expanding their family etc

So no point in keeping them on your members list.

Over the years members come and go, that's just the way it is.

[tvfans]

Sept 21, 2020 7:19:18 GMT -8 Trab said:

I may only be in my earlier phases of being a mod, but if they hang around with 0 posts for at least 6 months and if people only registered then left a few minutes later, it's clear that they're not coming back, so I delete them for pure inactivity.

same

[Retread]

Nov 9, 2020 11:43:14 GMT -8 tvfans said:

I had a lot of inactive members on my previous forum.  But I have noticed, the more members you have, the more you attract spammers.

I asked all of them if they were ok with me deleting their account.  They didn't get back to me.

I'm talking about members who hadn't been active for years due to work, other interests, expanding their family etc

So no point in keeping them on your members list.

Over the years members come and go, that's just the way it is.

More members making a forum more attractive to spammers is an interesting theory but do you have hard data to confirm? As a forum matures, it becomes more present in search results. That might be what attracts spammers, regardless of the number of members. Hard to say for certain.

GN2 has been in operation for more than 15 years and has over 4000 members, most of whom are inactive. In the past 12 months we've had 20 spammers. That's an average of less than two per month.

I'm not sure why some owners become so alarmed by the run-of-the-mill ad spammers. They are easily handled. Move their posts or threads to a board which is not visible to the public (or delete them), then ban the member by username, Global ID, and IP address (and optionally delete them). And the 'damage' they cause is inconsequential. For a very short period of time the spam post or thread is useless clutter.

Whether or not 'There's no point in keeping them (inactive members) on your members list.' Depends on the particular forum. In the case of GN2, we provide an informational resource. A small part of the information we provide is contained in attachments, which can only be viewed (full-size) by members. So I reckon at least some of our inactive members registered just to be able to view the attachments. Personally I see no reason to inconvenience them by requiring them to re-register if they need to view attachments again.

Also, on some years we have had a week-long anniversary celebration. We begin by sending out an email to all members, to notify them of the upcoming event. We've had several previously inactive members post during the event. So for us, there is a point to keeping inactive members on our list. However, since all forums are different, Your Mileage May Vary.

[bigballofyarn]

Nov 16, 2020 8:49:44 GMT -8 Retread said:

Nov 9, 2020 11:43:14 GMT -8 tvfans said:

I had a lot of inactive members on my previous forum.  But I have noticed, the more members you have, the more you attract spammers.

I asked all of them if they were ok with me deleting their account.  They didn't get back to me.

I'm talking about members who hadn't been active for years due to work, other interests, expanding their family etc

So no point in keeping them on your members list.

Over the years members come and go, that's just the way it is.

More members making a forum more attractive to spammers is an interesting theory but do you have hard data to confirm? As a forum matures, it becomes more present in search results. That might be what attracts spammers, regardless of the number of members. Hard to say for certain.

ProBoards Support has over 99,000 members who joined and never posted. That's interesting in itself. Perhaps a higher member count attracts more registrations in general, but we cannot prove the motives behind the registrations.

[tvfans]

There's no proof... but since I removed the inactive members who hadn't logged in for years and year (my forum is 12 yrs old) I have less, barely any, spammers.
(I'm not talking about ProBoards. I've had a forum with forum2go for 12 years)

And yes, like you said, it's different for every format. Everyone should do what they see fit.

[Mandoli]

I don't delete/ban accounts. They have a life, and they can come in whenever they want without a problem.

Who knows why people don't come back for extended periods of time. But if someone doesn't remember their password and finds out that their account is gone... They're going to question it. If they're banned, then what good is that? They'll be mad at the person who banned them.

I only ban people who deserve bans. Inactives don't deserve that, nor do they deserve deletion.

[endo]

If I banned or deleted inactive accounts on my forum, there wouldn't be many left, lol. I have a core group of users (aka friends), and that's usually it. I do have a lot of guests all the time and I do get people that join, but they usually post their intro and that's it.
I don't hear from them again.

I think that's weird, why bother to join just to quit? Or maybe they meant to come back and they just forgot what site it was.

Anyway, no. I don't ban non-active accounts. The door is always open.

I should add that we do have people that join and become great members too, just not often that they stay.

[¡Lance!]

I typically will delete the accounts in question if they haven't posted in like three to four weeks after being updated about a site, haven't returned responses after making an account and then not posting ever, or are just no longer with the group or forums that we're a part of. I also delete duplicate accounts linked to the same IP address(Typically if the person is an active member I will give them a heads up to consolidate everything to one account). This way I don't feel like I'm lying to potential new members about having like 100+ members yet only two or three are active. Also with my sites(Which are typically RP forums), I generally don't do the "One character per account" rule. Since that messes with forum analytics that I keep track of and also again artificially inflates member count.

[hippiejo]

This has been a really informative thread.
When I ran a general forum years ago, I would always message inactive members firstly to check they were ok. If I still didn't hear anything after about 6 months, I would delete the account but now, thinking about it, I'm really not sure why. As said previously, it didn't really matter.

I wouldn't delete inactive members in my book forum. I definitely know I have one member that pops in very occasionally just to read reviews and I suspect in the future others will do the same. I don't have a problem with that. I don't want people to feel pressured to post although it is much better when they do.

I voted that no I don't ban or delete inactive accounts.