Missing members

[vank]

Everook lists and wonder what happened to people?

[bigballofyarn]

I do this on my own forum and ProBoards Support. Because I have 20 years of history with ProBoards Support, I do look at the member list sometimes and view the last posts of people who have thousands of posts and stopped logging in. Almost all the time, there was no goodbye and no ban. Their last post was something trivial and then they fell off the ProBoards planet.

On my own forum where I can email or text a lot of people, some wanted to take a break, but the longer the break they took, the easier it was to stay away forever, and the harder it became to want to return. They usually indicated that they felt like returning would be like starting over as a new member.

My guess is that in most cases, nothing tragic happened to these people. What started as a break or minor life event just turned into a permanent decision.

[vank]

Helpful. Thx.

[Kami]

Jan 19, 2023 6:44:11 GMT -8 vank said:

Everook lists and wonder what happened to people?

I tend to keep my member list up to date because we're an RP site, so basically after X amount of inactivity I delete folks.

That said, I actually know where most of the 'main' members that wound up leaving are up to. I'm friends with a good chunk of them (and haha, am marrying one of them this year), and the others I may not be super close to but still get to check in with -- most of them were kids when they joined us, but now they're adults getting married with jobs and stuff. Several of my members became doctors and nurses and lawyers, others became game industry professionals, and still others have started families.

[vank]

Thanks Kami too

[The Referee]

Jan 19, 2023 15:25:52 GMT -8 Kami said:

Jan 19, 2023 6:44:11 GMT -8 vank said:

Everook lists and wonder what happened to people?

I tend to keep my member list up to date because we're an RP site, so basically after X amount of inactivity I delete folks.

That said, I actually know where most of the 'main' members that wound up leaving are up to. I'm friends with a good chunk of them (and haha, am marrying one of them this year), and the others I may not be super close to but still get to check in with -- most of them were kids when they joined us, but now they're adults getting married with jobs and stuff. Several of my members became doctors and nurses and lawyers, others became game industry professionals, and still others have started families.

I don't delete accounts for the simple reason that while it used to leave the name there, now it changes it to deleted which is horribly ugly. I wish there was someway to change it to something less offensive.

[bigballofyarn]

I used to delete accounts when people hadn't logged in for a long time. I'm not sure whether or not I regret that decision, but I did stop that practice, and it's too late to change anything. Some people like to come and go with long absences in between and do not want to start over when they return.

[Kami]

Jan 25, 2023 23:55:04 GMT -8 The Referee said:

Jan 19, 2023 15:25:52 GMT -8 Kami said:

I tend to keep my member list up to date because we're an RP site, so basically after X amount of inactivity I delete folks.

That said, I actually know where most of the 'main' members that wound up leaving are up to. I'm friends with a good chunk of them (and haha, am marrying one of them this year), and the others I may not be super close to but still get to check in with -- most of them were kids when they joined us, but now they're adults getting married with jobs and stuff. Several of my members became doctors and nurses and lawyers, others became game industry professionals, and still others have started families.

I don't delete accounts for the simple reason that while it used to leave the name there, now it changes it to deleted which is horribly ugly. I wish there was someway to change it to something less offensive.

There is :P Feel free to ask in the Templates board.

Also, my site is different from others and necessitates deletion of inactive accounts. RP communities have to maintain accurate membership lists because they are an integral part of determining who plays what character and what interactions are available for play.

[The Referee]

Jan 26, 2023 6:51:44 GMT -8 Kami said:

Feel free to ask in the Templates board.

Also, my site is different from others and necessitates deletion of inactive accounts. RP communities have to maintain accurate membership lists because they are an integral part of determining who plays what character and what interactions are available for play.

My forum has some play by post games going at times, but those usually have around a max of 6-8 players so keeping track is not a problem and the character is usually identified in the signature and I used a plug in to increase the number of characters available in the signature. I can see if you whole for was for RP it might be more difficult.

[Kami]

Jan 26, 2023 9:59:35 GMT -8 The Referee said:

Jan 26, 2023 6:51:44 GMT -8 Kami said:

Feel free to ask in the Templates board.

Also, my site is different from others and necessitates deletion of inactive accounts. RP communities have to maintain accurate membership lists because they are an integral part of determining who plays what character and what interactions are available for play.

My forum has some play by post games going at times, but those usually have around a max of 6-8 players so keeping track is not a problem and the character is usually identified in the signature and I used a plug in to increase the number of characters available in the signature. I can see if you whole for was for RP it might be more difficult.

Yeah, my entire forum is play by post RP; we have out of character accounts for 'normal' posting, but a vast majority of our accounts are specific to a user's character. If we don't keep our member lists accurate, it a) gives a false activity level which is a huge metric for RPers on deciding whether or not to join a forum (some folks prefer big sites, others small, etc) and b) it messes up the playable character directory resulting in characters that are actually not available for RP being tagged to join in.