Old, inactive members?

[adi_gallia]

I was just looking at the members list and saw that there were quite a lot of people that had never posted. I was wondering whether deleting them would easy or helpful to the website?

I don't know much about how the forum work so it's just an idea that might mean less space is taken up. I think the deletions should happen to people who signed up in May last year and have never posted, possibly later than that, but again I am clueless about how easy/useful this is, just an idea.

[Illuen]

I was just looking at the members list and saw that there were quite a lot of people that had never posted. I was wondering whether deleting them would easy or helpful to the website?

I don't know much about how the forum work so it's just an idea that might mean less space is taken up. I think the deletions should happen to people who signed up in May last year and have never posted, possibly later than that, but again I am clueless about how easy/useful this is, just an idea.

We have quite a few lurkers to this forum, who create an account simply so they can see what is written. Also, we have people who make accounts, forget about the forum, or don't have time to post, and then come back. Perfect example is Ulyyf, who made an account on these new forums right when it opened, and did not post until rather recently. I just see it as pointless, and if anything potentially harmful.

[dandelions]

It would be time-consuming and not very helpful- look at it this way, each one only takes up as much space in the database as about a twenty-word post.

[adi_gallia]

Ahh I see then. Sorry.

[Garrett]

I actually have a question about the topic.

Say someone wanted to sign up, and the name they wanted was taken by someone who has never been active since sign up, never posted or been on here since. Are we allowed to request the account be deleted to get the username?

[dandelions]

In theory, yes. In practice, I might have to refuse because it's too confusing- for example, if someone requested to sign up with "ulyyf", I wouldn't allow that.

[Trick]

Past forums I've been on/helped run etc, did purge all the obviously crap users that sign up to try and post spam or are just bots or what have you. But I don't think it does make a huge amount of difference load wise.

[ulyyf]

Of course, using me as an example, I was a pretty active member before the move here. It's not the same as wanting to be randomuser1983, though it does make sense to just say "Not gonna bother" for everything.

There's only 1000 members here anyway, right? There's still plenty of available options for namesetting.