Inactive Member Deletion

[Bob_Roller]

Sue, you will never be deleted , at least by me anyway !!!

[suecanada]

Gee thanks Bob. Someday I should try to get down your way...especially in winter!!

[montmil]

Don't go fishin' in dat pond!  

[Bob_Roller]

Perfect weather this time of year for riding overnight lows 50-55 F 10-13 C highs 80-90 F  27-32 C.

Was working on the oilhead today and it got to 97 F 36C in the garage by 4 PM, south facing garage low sun angle this itme of year, plenty of heat still .

[Altritter]

[size=12]Bob,

I've been off the net much too long—several months now. Before I stopped logging in, I had gotten into the habit of "checking news & gossip" without taking time to add my own $0.02 worth.

Today I signed in to check headlines, and I noticed this posting. So, I checked my account outbox and found, to my horror. that my last posting appears to have been somewhat > 730 days ago.

Thank you for not being obsessive about purging a member immediately upon exceeding the inactivity limit. In the future, I hope I can keep better track of the extent of my inactivity.

John[/size]

[Bob_Roller]

The 730 days, has nothing to do with postings, it's just logging on to this site .

If you log on and just want to ' lurk ', that's fine with me .

It's 730 days of not logging in to this site, if you have made at least 6 postings .

You don't have access to this information, but in ' admin ' mode you can view this very easily .

There are members here that havn't made a posting in years, but they log on regularly .

When I was offered an admin position and took it coming up on three years ago, I looked at the membership ranks and found that we had about 1400 members .

But looking at the activity of the members, some had not been online here or made postings in 5 years .

I ' culled the herd ' down to 6-700 members with the method I used in the original posting of this thread .

The moderator of this site had no problem with the method I use, as I went to him first with it before I deleted anyone .

The only comment he made was, that if anyone complains about being deleted, he'll direct them to me to take the ' heat ' for it .

So far I havn't heard of anyone doing so .

The only member that came back after being deleted, was AJB, he said he had internet  / computer issues for an extended period of time and was deleted after not making any postings for 180 days after creating an ' account ', or profile on this site .

After doing this for awhile and seeing the ' trends ', if a member doesn't log in for a year, it's very rare, they come back before the time frame that I have set is met .

[Rob Valdez 79 R65]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJUSNtPocqs

(and no, it is not about mass killings)


edit: fixed link

[davidpdx]

One of my favorite quotes from Cheers.
 
Cliff: Well ya see, Norm, it's like this. A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members. In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Excessive intake of alcohol, as we know, kills brain cells. But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine. That's why you always feel smarter after a few beers.

[Justin B.]

I support Bob in his "culling" activities...

[Rob Valdez 79 R65]

Thank you for your input, nothing.
Was that your previous handle, as well?

[Rob Valdez 79 R65]

Was that your previous handle, as well?

Yes. Luckily nobody wanted it in the meantime and I was able to regain my username, but as it's a new account it isn't linked to my previous posting history.

I don't know what could be done about that.

[Bob_Roller]

Members are only deleted after two years of not logging in here .

A vast majority of these members had 20 or fewer postings, not  very active members when they were here .

People move on in life and this forum is forgotten, I've been a member here since 2000 and I've seen a couple thousand members ' pass ' through here in 14 years .

You've got the ' core ' of members that make the forum work and then a larger majority are just passing through here, make a few postings and then disappear .

I've talked to moderators on other motorcycle forums and other subject forums as well, they all agree, that if a member doesn't come back for 2 years, they rarely if ever return .

Some of these sites even delete members after a year of inactivity .

If this site had a provision for an inactive file for members, I would put members in there .

It's common for this site to slow down in the winter months, when the riding season begins again in the Northern hemisphere, the activity picks up here as well, it's seasonal, has been for the 14 years I've been here .  

[clonmore1]

'Why is the deletion necessary though? What benefit does it serve?'
--------------------------------------------

I would suspect (waiting to be told this is not the case... ) that we all take up space on the site, hence the various topics over the years re posting large images (of which I admit to being guilty ) and surely each users occupies space and therefore cost.

It would seem reasonable that a member can visit and not post for some time, yet somebody who joins (takes up space) and then never visits or posts (or very infrequently) is taking both space and time (for admin who manage the site on behalf of the members) I spend a lot of time visiting and reading to learn, yet I don't post as often as I visit.

The rules of the site seem very reasonable bearing in mind the cost in time for the admin/mods plus the enormous amount of free knowledge on this site.  .

I think I made sense there... :-?

[Barry]

Perfect sense.

As someone who manages a network of over 500 computers I have a lot of sympathy for concerns about large images resulting in excessive storage requirements. Consider that we are fortunate to still be able to post images. Most of the other airhead forums have given up the unequal struggle and will only accept links to photo's stored elsewhere.  

All I can say is it's a good job I'm not a moderator or some of the large images would be deleted !

[Rob Valdez 79 R65]

Unfortunately, unless one is a registered member (and logged in) on R65.org, one cannot see the images and URL links.

I'm beginning to see a flaw in this plan.