LoganSnake

Does the amount of accounts registered to the site affect how much space the board takes up on the server? In a related question, does it affect search speed?

There are thousands of registered users on this site with less than 3 posts and years of inactivity. I was just wondering...what's the point of keeping them instead of just doing a sweep?

__________________
Maturity is knowing you were an idiot in the past. Wisdom is knowing that you'll be an idiot in the future. Common sense is knowing that you should try not to be an idiot now. - J. Jacques

Cynthetiq

it has no effect on the performance of the server. yes it takes up space, as far as the database is concerned, but it's not like there's something else going on when loading up the page.

__________________
I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.

LoganSnake

So, again, why keep dead weight?

If you deleted all the users who haven't posted in the last 3 years with 2 posts or less, your membership number would probably drop to around 50,000.

__________________
Maturity is knowing you were an idiot in the past. Wisdom is knowing that you'll be an idiot in the future. Common sense is knowing that you should try not to be an idiot now. - J. Jacques

Cynthetiq

first, consider how many spammers have come and registered to this site, it reopens those same bot names to being able to be registered again.

second, aside from the spammers it's the people that have passed through these halls.

also, if we kill the accounts, we'd impact the threads, it would become a total mess.

finally, just because they haven't been here in 3 years, doesn't mean we should torch them. my email that went out to the all the members brought some of them back.

__________________
I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.

LoganSnake

I don't see how it would become a total mess in 3 year old threads where the user posted once or twice. Besides, the posts themselves aren't deleted when the user name is. It just changes the name to Guest.

Even if you deleted accounts with 0 posts, that would make for several thousand users that have never posted.

I don't know. I guess I just don't see the reason for carrying around the number of 100,000 members when there aren't even 4% of that number that are active. The only point I somewhat agree with is the spammer registration and only because I'm lazy and it would've been a pain in the ass to ban them again.

__________________
Maturity is knowing you were an idiot in the past. Wisdom is knowing that you'll be an idiot in the future. Common sense is knowing that you should try not to be an idiot now. - J. Jacques

Plan9

Glad I'm not in charge of anything here... I'd start erasing the no-shows like Genghis Khan. If for no other reason than to have a useful members list.

I'm sure TFP is archiving a hundred thousand nobodies for a reason, but it really just seems like my mother's coffee table stacks of magazines from 1993.

SecretMethod70

It also places TFP higher up on lists of forums, which helps bring in new users.

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Le temps détruit tout

"Musicians are the carriers and communicators of spirit in the most immediate sense." - Kurt Elling

Cynthetiq

I forgot about that aspect for board ranking, thanks SM.

In following that vein, it's a badge to wear when talking amongst other admins that you have a board with over 1 million posts and over 50,000 users.

__________________
I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.

Plan9

Well, that certainly shines a light on ranking systems.

LoganSnake

So in other words, it's just fronting without much back up.

__________________
Maturity is knowing you were an idiot in the past. Wisdom is knowing that you'll be an idiot in the future. Common sense is knowing that you should try not to be an idiot now. - J. Jacques

Cynthetiq

It's not fronting anything. It is the total amount of registered users.

There is a list of active members, active members means whatever you set it to mean, in our case it is members who have visited within the past 90 days. Currently our active user base is around 3,300 users.

If you looked at the town hall page that has stats, we average about 300 new registrations a month, this leaves 3,000 core users. But that's not meaningful in any manner because I can set it to be 120 days, or ever 365 days.

__________________
I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.

LoganSnake

I'm more interested in how many active users we have that actually post and not just lurk in the shadows. Applying the same 90 day time period.

I think we have different definitions of an active forum member.

__________________
Maturity is knowing you were an idiot in the past. Wisdom is knowing that you'll be an idiot in the future. Common sense is knowing that you should try not to be an idiot now. - J. Jacques

Cynthetiq

It's not my definition. It is a definition that is the standard for pretty much every BBS software I've ever used.

An active member isn't required to participate in a discussion if the site bases their success on page views for advertisements. It's active and making the board owner money.

There are many TFP members who lurked for years and then one day decided to start posting. They read threads and posts for years, know and understand the characters and posters, I don't see how that makes them less of a participant as far as the board is concerned. As far as the discussion well that's a different metric.

__________________
I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.

ratbastid

Um. Been on the internet long? ;-)

Seriously, though, the amount of disc space taken up by a few thousand records in a members db table is probably less than the average two minute video clip, if that puts it in perspective. It wouldn't even be the first place I'd look if I ran TFP and started running out of hard drive space.

If I were looking to save HD space for TFP, I'd probably start by killing attached files older than a certain (very old) threshold. I might auto-email their owners telling them we're doing that and to re-up them if they care.