What about old inactive names?

[Mordane76]

Does ENWorld have a time-frace for when they delete old usernames that haven't had activity? I know we all enjoy breaking into new levels of membership, but there are account names that haven't had activity for two years.

This question wasn't prompted by my interest in a new name; the Poll function on the front screen got me thinking about it. It brings up polls for all over the boards, even REALLY old ones. I was looking at some of the names (since I didn't recognize the creators), and realized that some of these people haven't had activity in 6-22 months.

 

[Michael Morris]

Does ENWorld have a time-frace for when they delete old usernames that haven't had activity? I know we all enjoy breaking into new levels of membership, but there are account names that haven't had activity for two years.

This question wasn't prompted by my interest in a new name; the Poll function on the front screen got me thinking about it. It brings up polls for all over the boards, even REALLY old ones. I was looking at some of the names (since I didn't recognize the creators), and realized that some of these people haven't had activity in 6-22 months.

The old user names don't take that much space on the server - that said I'll probably look for an account expiration hack after more important matters are dealt with.

 

[Morrus]

User names don't use up any resources to speak of. And having a large user count is great for attracting advertisers; I couldn't compete with other large RPG sites for advertising dollars if I pruned where they didn't.

 

[johnsemlak]

User names don't use up any resources to speak of. And having a large user count is great for attracting advertisers; I couldn't compete with other large RPG sites for advertising dollars if I pruned where they didn't.

You could ask everyone to 'stuff' the user count by creating 5+ user names

 

[Mordane76]

Ah. Things I hadn't considered.

I wasn't saying there's anything wrong with them -- I was just wondering if we had a policy on them... and I guess we do...


Ghostly residents GOOD! Advertisers LIKE numbers!

 

[Michael Morris]

You could ask everyone to 'stuff' the user count by creating 5+ user names

There's already a site like that - Nutkinland. There are only 3 real people at NKL, but 500+ users

 

[Joshua Randall]

You'd think that most people would be savvy enough to look for some more relevant metrics by this point in the Internet's development. But nope, all anyone cares about are easily distorted numbers like users and page views. Blah.

 

[Mark]

I'm not completely sure (maybe an admin can straighten me out on this?), but I think that a registered name can appear to have never been used if someone has never posted and yet be quite active in many ways. I believe that it is possible, even without having ever posted, to have subscribed to threads, voted in polls, and generally set up a user name with parameters (such as default options such as turning off signatures or images, utilizing the ignore lists), and perhaps also using the private message features, that make lurking on EN World easier for a user. They may even be reading this now...

 

[pensiv]

I know I use the site much much more than I post.

 

[Mercule]

I know I use the site much much more than I post.

Now, see, I'm just the opposite.