a bandwidth-saving idea
 

I'm not sure how much of an effect (if an effect at all) this would have but why not, in an attempt to save bandwidth, actually DELETE the accounts of banned users. Wipe out all their posts, information, etc, just to avoid the buildup of dead space. Just came to me after seeing a bunch of "Loser" and "Banned" tags circulationg about, and it got me thinking "I wonder if the site would be at all faster if all their accounts were gone." Didn't think it could hurt to ask.

I'm assuming the bandwith saved would amount to tenths of a percent...
Some diskspace would be saved however.

I don't think the small advantages would weigh towards losing thread coherence though.
I think I remember Hal saying something about this a while back (I know, no search...) with the same conclusion...

how many accounts have zero posts that are many months old?

maybe automagically purge those accounts after say 3-4 mos.
if they haven't posted by that amt of time, they probably aren't going to...
although, i don't know how much that would help either......

Yeah I thought of that too but really you never do know... they MIGHT post. That's why I didn't bring it up. Banned users, however are ASSURED not to post. That's why I DID bring them up.

As for thread relevance lost, if it's a thread that the banned user was instrumental to, and if it's not deemed as totally important by the staff, the thread could be deleted as well. Just an idea.

that wouldn't save much bandwidth, you know. We're more concerned about CPU time anyways, and we've done a good job of curbing that.

User gets banned.

Account gets deleted

Someone signs up with banned username; is it someone else, or is it the same person coming back?

deleting banned accounts/dead topics wont do anything to the bandwidth unfortunately. saves a bit of disc space..but not much unless you delete a hell of a lot.