I am going to delete all accounts not logged into in the last year. If your account is inactive I highly recommend signing in as soon as possible. Once deleted the username will be available to the next user who wants it and will be unable to be returned to you. This is your fair warning!

Can we call dibs on certain names?

Auction off names for site donations...

This seems to me unnecessary, I think it's very much a part of the nature of being trans that people will stop posting for long periods and then return and I can't imagine that keeping account data alive poses an excessive incremental size to the database, especially given the site seems to hold all posts back to the last time the server was hacked.

Is this an annual purge? What purpose does a warning serve to members who aren't active and therefore mostly won't be read?

So if they come and complain later notice was given...

Quote from: SadieBlake on December 15, 2016, 03:28:33 PM
This seems to me unnecessary, I think it's very much a part of the nature of being trans that people will stop posting for long periods and then return and I can't imagine that keeping account data alive poses an excessive incremental size to the database, especially given the site seems to hold all posts back to the last time the server was hacked.

Is this an annual purge? What purpose does a warning serve to members who aren't active and therefore mostly won't be read?

I would assume it's to free up names so new members don't have to be known as "Squigglebottom6237"? The choices of simple names dried up long ago, many are assigned to people who haven't been on for quite some time. It's also very much a part of being trans that people use this site while transitioning, then move along. 

Hugs, Devlyn

why are you doing this? other forums don't do it and somehow they don't run out of usernames...

I am curious CEJ, what concerns you so much about this simple maintenance procedure?

Over half the names in the data base never made a post and just were on for an hour or two. There are a fair amount of names that were claimed by Spammers. Spammers will often create several names, use one to spam the site then get banned blocking the usefulness of the rest. A spam ban is long enough that they lose interest in retaining a list of the previous names they have created. Believe it or not, the spammers have claimed some pretty good names taking them out of circulation. I suspect of the 25,000 names that have been claimed, we will lose over half and nobody will miss them.

Quote from: cej on December 15, 2016, 03:39:25 PM
why are you doing this? other forums don't do it and somehow they don't run out of usernames...

Actually that isn't true. I had a user name at Yahoo that was wiped in a name purge. I was a member of a forum and recreating the name didn't reconnect me to the forum. I would have had to request membership in the forum to reconnect the account.

For me the majority of complaints I receive about the newsletter notifications are from members who left a long time ago. So I am gonna clear accounts which haven't been logged in for at least 1 year. This will also free up 18,293 usernames for new members who will hopefully actually use them. Still leaving us with somewhere around 8,118 active members based on today's numbers. This may also purge private messages sent by and to these members so archive anything you wish to keep.

For the staff I will accept a list of usernames we would like to keep such as Nero.

I will do the purge on Jan 1 2017 giving people plenty of time to check in.

I am also considering a ban list wipe. I know the mods will love me for that...

Quote from: Dena on December 15, 2016, 03:43:51 PM
Over half the names in the data base never made a post and just were on for an hour or two. There are a fair amount of names that were claimed by Spammers. Spammers will often create several names, use one to spam the site then get banned blocking the usefulness of the rest. A spam ban is long enough that they lose interest in retaining a list of the previous names they have created. Believe it or not, the spammers have claimed some pretty good names taking them out of circulation. I suspect of the 25,000 names that have been claimed, we will lose over half and nobody will miss them.

Yes that makes sense but I'd still think it would make sense to make the horizon longer for accounts that have an actual posting history than those that have never been used.

Yes and no in some ways it helps because it means we no longer have to search down a ban that we can't find to place one so and in other ways not so much. It's fair TBH, we will survive and make do as we always do and I believe it has been done before around this time of the year.
Having said that some of the names that I think should be protected include ones such as Nero and Dennis both retired Forum admins along with other former staffers who contributed a lot to the forums over time. Anyways just an idea.

Quote from: Susan on December 15, 2016, 03:46:53 PM
For me the majority of complaints I receive about the newsletter notifications are from members who left a long time ago. So I am gonna clear accounts which haven't been logged in for at least 1 year. This will also free up 18,293 usernames for new members who will hopefully actually use them. Still leaving us with somewhere around 8,118 active members based on today's numbers. This may also purge private messages sent by and to these members so archive anything you wish to keep.

For the staff I will accept a list of usernames we would like to keep such as Nero.

I will do the purge on Jan 1 2017 giving people plenty of time to check in.

I am also considering a ban list wipe. I know the mods will love me for that...

Quote from: Susan on December 15, 2016, 03:36:41 PM
So if they come and complain later notice was given...

May I suggest this is added to the ToS so notice is given to users before they stop using the forum?

(Not that a lot of people read the ToS, I know...)

Fresas con Nata I can't remember if I ever have seen record of it occurring before now. I suspect is because over a long time they have really piled up and she is wanting to give new users a chance at a user name they would like. Also it is covered under the following TOS.

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Quote from: Fresas con Nata on December 15, 2016, 11:48:09 PM
May I suggest this is added to the ToS so notice is given to users before they stop using the forum?

(Not that a lot of people read the ToS, I know...)

Upon further review it occurred one other time back in 2008 for security reasons and inactive accounts longer than 6 months went that time along with accounts with no post.

Quote from: Fresas con Nata on December 15, 2016, 11:48:09 PM
May I suggest this is added to the ToS so notice is given to users before they stop using the forum?

(Not that a lot of people read the ToS, I know...)

When someone reuses a name it does it let them appear to be the same person as the original user, or are the names on the old posts removed?

Just a thought, but you might be able to achieve much the same ends by removing inactive accounts that have less than 15 posts (or 100, or whatever). That way only people who never really invested in the site (and spammers) would be removed, and they probably don't care anyway.

Names on old posts from the old account will show as guest users, profile information, private messages etc are removed.

Quote from: AnonyMs on December 16, 2016, 01:43:50 AM
When someone reuses a name it does it let them appear to be the same person as the original user, or are the names on the old posts removed?

Just a thought, but you might be able to achieve much the same ends by removing inactive accounts that have less than 15 posts (or 100, or whatever). That way only people who never really invested in the site (and spammers) would be removed, and they probably don't care anyway.

I am not putting any post limit. There's no difference in the accounts for my purposes between an account with no posts and an account with 18k posts that is inactive.

When I ran a forum, I did exactly the same. Makes total sense. For me, it was also about freeing up names for new members, plus, seeing the real actual number of forum users and not some imaginary number that some forums sport with. Nice and clean, I like it.