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

[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