Purging old accounts

[fenderhutz]

Is there a TalkBass policy on puring accounts for say people that haven't logged in for two or so years?

I noticed alot of weird accounts in the members list and was just curious if they get deleted.

[mike_v_s]

I doubt you'll see a deletion of any accounts. The likely reason you'll hear is that no one actually "quit" or asked for their account to be deleted and that (having not quit) they should recieve access to their account the same as anyone.

I used to work for a "non-profit" organization. For them (like this site) membership numbers show growth, stability, etc and play a role in who is willing to partner with you on the business end. They didn't delete any of their membership either.

Mike

[markjazzbassist]

interesting idea. i can see the validity in both the above posts. i vote for purging if it frees up bandwidth and speeds up TB. If it won't affect anything like that, than i say keep it.

[fenderhutz]

That and it would free up some user names.

I mean if you don't use the account for 2 years chances are you aren't coming back anytime soon.

I don't see how it would speed anything up on the backend removing them. (being in the IT world)

I was just curious as well. It might look good to an advertiser you have 40,000 members but it's looks better to say we have 28,000 ACTIVE members for the last two years. Just my .02 and it's not my site so it's just that anyway.

[markjazzbassist]

Originally Posted by fenderhutz

That and it would free up some user names.

I mean if you don't use the account for 2 years chances are you aren't coming back anytime soon.

I don't see how it would speed anything up on the backend removing them.

oh i definately agree, But the whole thing about inflated numbers would probably help Paul with generating Revenue and such, and if that's gonna suffer, then it's not worth it IMO.

[fenderhutz]

I was just curious really. If it keeps TB alive so be it.

[mike_v_s]

Originally Posted by markjazzbassist

oh i definately agree, But the whole thing about inflated numbers would probably help Paul with generating Revenue and such, and if that's gonna suffer, then it's not worth it IMO.

I'm with ya, to a certain extent. I still kinda have a problem with BS numbers being used.....but like I said, a half-hearted effort can be made to say they are accurate.

Mike

[seanm]

A few years back Paul purged the lists and he later posted that he regretted doing it. markjazzbassist is correct, you need to show increasing membership numbers. The more members the more ad $$$ you can ask for.

mike_v_s, unfortunately since other lists don't purge, that is what the advertisers are used to.

[mike_v_s]

Originally Posted by seanm

A few years back Paul purged the lists and he later posted that he regretted doing it. markjazzbassist is correct, you need to show increasing membership numbers. The more members the more ad $$$ you can ask for.

mike_v_s, unfortunately since other lists don't purge, that is what the advertisers are used to.

When I worked non-profit, the rolls were kept padded for the same reason. We took money from a variety of organizations that based their donation on our "membership" in a particular geographic or socio/economic area.

As far as that being the industry standard here, that's very unfortunate and the validity of it is very much a matter of perspective. My year end raises and job security in general were heavily based on the "membership" in my service area. I still purged the accounts when I became aware of the number of inactive members.

You see, I spent most of the year enrolling as many people as possible into the program legitimately. If I'm busting my ass for 11 months to add good membership on top of bad, my efforts are for naught. Why bother? If the baseline is already BS, you might as well just make up the rest anyway and save yourself the trouble. Ethically, there is no difference.

Paul can do whatever he wants with his website. On this little facet, I'd do it differently.

Mike

[paul]

I'd purge usernames if it had any effect on server performance or hosting costs - it doesn't. The number of records in the user table is very very tiny when it comes to mysql database capabilities (for example even if we had 100,000 members, that's nothing. Searching these records (by username) puts no strain on the server. We are at the same time handling a post table with nearly 5,000,000 records. Pruning posts would help our performance - but would also harm the value of this site.

[SuperDuck]

Originally Posted by paul

Pruning posts would help our performance - but would also harm the value of this site.

I hereby volunteer my services to point out threads that I think are useless, which can then be deleted.

[presentationmal]

Some forums will delete but where as some forums wont.