Is there an automatic user deletion process active in this forum?

[Dave Hicks]

Yes I’ve found posts from a number of pruned users. We do have a few delete-happy posters who will occasionally delete 10 of their own posts within the course of a couple of minutes, (someone recently deleted his post from this thread) but I haven’t yet seen any sign of pruning deleting any posts.

There is an option for pruning the posts of pruned users but it has always been turned off.

Looking at the pruning code, I see where it deletes the user, private messages, forum and thread subscriptions, sessions, avatars, and some other user-related stuff (accounts in modern forums really have a lot of stuff). Then it checks for whether posts are also supposed to be pruned – and they are not. It looks correct to me.

[sylvandb]

It does seem to me that pruning based on time since last login would be preferable to requiring posting...

[Manolo Sobrino]

Something like this would be nice:[url=http://mods.mybb.com/view/limit-number-of-threads] http://mods.mybb.com/view/limit-number-of-threads[/url].

[Thomas Falk]

Hi,

(04-16-2014 10:09 PM)Terje Vallestad Wrote:  If you look in the first post of this link, I think you will see a user that has been pruned due to the earlier 120 days no posting rule. His post seems to stay put (at least for the time being), but his user name is not clickable anymore so probably a dead account.

this posting was mine. As you can see I'm back, even with the same name. But the connection to my old postings is gone. As you can see in the thread sometime it takes a little longer before responses are coming in. Bad, if your account is pruned until then.

I would also prefer a pruning based on logins, not by postings. Maybe it would be possible to get an e-mail before being removed.

I see it as problem if you can use the old name again. This may allow somebody to take a name belonging to somebody - inactive - other and lead to confusion.

Regards,

Thomas

[Thomas Radtke]

We could get around posting nonsense(*) here by (1) a mechanism for sending out emails to users in danger of being pruned (I know some fora support these) and (2) establish a nice smalltalk thread. As a non-native english speaker(**) I'd welcome some smalltalk and would participate.

Edit:

(*) ok, not nonsense. I'll leave that mistake unchanged to prove (**)
(**) find a prove in (*). At least.

[cutterjohn]

wow, and I think that I went sometime w/o posting after creating my account initially...

I'm with the turn off the auto-prune "feature". Especially since it's probably highly unlikely that there ever will be a ginormously huge number of users.

That said, I also primarily just read a number of forums where I'm a member and have gone years between bothering to post and have yet to be "pruned" on them. The ony place that I've been "pruned"(and then not really) was Yahoo! mail... (just say buh-bye to your old mail, good thing that it's primarily a spamdump addy)

[d b]

(04-14-2014 03:42 PM)Katie Wasserman Wrote:  Removing users because they haven't posted seems, errr.... dare I say it,..... Draconian!

So; this is where it stands now?
Not posting for one year and you're pruned.
Gratuitous Dr. Who reference: beheading.

[rkf]

(05-30-2014 04:32 PM)Den Belillo (Martinez Ca.) Wrote:  Not posting for one year and you're pruned.

IIRC it was not posting for four or so months only. I can't say more precisely, since I was pruned away without any warning - simply all was gone.

[Dave Hicks]

Yes, current setting is: you must make a post within the first 365 days of creating an account. The original setting was some small number of posts (possibly 3) within the first 120 days. If in some future year, you can still remember where this forum is and want to post, you can (re)create an account.

As shown above, posts were not pruned under the original or current settings so all was never simply gone.

Settings may change as we get more experience with the forum software, past performance does not guarantee future results, your mileage may vary, etc.

[Dan B]

Thank you for posting the current rules!

[Dave Britten]

My vote would be to remove the pruning, other than maybe accounts with zero posts total, and older than a couple months or something.

It's not a particularly vehement vote, mind you, but if anybody is keeping a tally, that would be my preference.

[Ernst Fueloep]

My monthly post to prevent my user to be pruned away.

And reading the latest posts I agree to remove this unnecessary pruning function of the forum.
As I have said earlier I am a member of several different forums. And nowhere was I pruned because I did not post in a certain timeframe.
Why does the forum owner want to have this pruning of users active?
I really don't see a valid reason for this.

[Bill (Smithville NJ)]

I just accidently stumbled onto this thread. I usually don't bother looking at "Forum Issues and Administration" threads. But since I have stumbled on to it, please let me add my comments.

When joining a new forum (based on having just come across a new interest), I have a tendency to "read the mail", so to speak, for quite sometime before I have the courage to do a post. This serves to allow me to become familiar with the forum members, their views, and the overall quality of the forum. It might be several months before I do my first post.

I don't think I am alone in doing this. Quite often, new people will "listen" for awhile before posting, or they may never post but just enjoy reading the forum.

Unless the membership become deluged with spam accounts or become so large that the software can't handle that many accounts, then I see no reason to actively prune accounts.

Only Dave can tell us if spam accounts has been a problem.
And having too many members would be a wonderful problem to have.

Over the years we have seen members become inactive-low post rate due to medical, financial, or other personal problems in their life. Do we really want to prune them due to lack of posts?

If pruning of accounts must be done, then I would much prefer that basing it on when the last time a member logged in makes the most sense. But I really don't understand pruning at all unless there is a really good reason for doing so.

If an account is pruned, then the post should remain. The exception to this is where the member was deleted due to offensive or inappropriate posts. Then the posts should also be deleted.

Bill

[rkf]

What made me really angry was the fact, that I was for many years a regular of the "old" forum, and at the moment the "new" forum went alive, I registered for it, and after some time was pruned away, although I posted in the new forum. All was gone, I had to start my career from scratch again. And there were no rules informing about it when registering, kind of "you have to do this and that in a given time frame, otherwise you will be pruned". Had I known this before, I had acted accordingly, but to my surprise I was pruned. Now I try to post as often as possible, only not to register a fourth time to hpmuseum.org

[Thomas Radtke]

(06-02-2014 03:55 PM)rkf Wrote:  All was gone, I had to start my career from scratch again.

I understand the posts of pruned users were preserved, no?

I'd vote for getting rid of those member titles. This teeny stuff doesn't belong here, imo.

[rkf]

(06-02-2014 04:19 PM)Thomas Radtke Wrote:  I understand the posts of pruned users were preserved, no?

I just did a forum search for posts from user rkf (me), and there was not any one found for the timeframe December 2013 - April 2014 (ca. time of being a user of the "new" forum before being pruned away). So obviously, the posts were not preserved.

[Massimo Gnerucci]

(06-02-2014 04:30 PM)rkf Wrote:  

(06-02-2014 04:19 PM)Thomas Radtke Wrote:  I understand the posts of pruned users were preserved, no?

I just did a forum search for posts from user rkf (me), and there was not any one found for the timeframe December 2013 - April 2014 (ca. time of being a user of the "new" forum before being pruned away). So obviously, the posts were not preserved.

20140228 06:52

[Thomas Radtke]

(06-02-2014 04:30 PM)rkf Wrote:  I just did a forum search for posts from user rkf (me), and there was not any one found for the timeframe December 2013 - April 2014 (ca. time of being a user of the "new" forum before being pruned away). So obviously, the posts were not preserved.

Found one (post #2):

http://www.hpmuseum.org/forum/thread-671.html

Unfortunately this post isn't connected to your current account :-/.

[Thomas Klemm]

(06-02-2014 04:42 PM)Massimo Gnerucci Wrote:  20140228 06:52

You can link directly to Post: #20.
Just copy the link location of the number of the post.

[Dave Hicks]

(06-02-2014 02:26 PM)Bill (Smithville NJ) Wrote:  Only Dave can tell us if spam accounts has been a problem.

On an average day, there are about 150 attempts to create spam accounts here. On some days over 400. The vast majority do not get through due to various anti-spam measures. Some never post - just set up links all over the user profile (not realizing that our non-viewable membership list means they won't help their page rank.) I just deleted one of those a couple of minutes ago that I happened to notice. But we have hundreds of other zero post accounts, some of which may also be non-posting spammers.

The spammers/spam bots keep getting more clever. Posting - and then going back and editing the post days or weeks later to add links. creating accounts for far future use etc. If only they would use their skills to make good things...