Dead Accounts

[Silverthorn]

Problem is that unused accounts take up space, block other people who may want to take that certain user name, and now even guests can view attachments. There's no need for anybody to register, being inactive for a year or similar, and then suddenly start to post. If they suddenly want to post, they'd have to sacrifice probably not more than 3 minutes to register (I don't even assume that they read the forum rules...) to start their membership. And it's not like we want the forum to become more active by deleting member's accounts, not at all. Instead we want to prohibit people that are just here, but don't do anything. Looking at statistics, there will always be a little percentage that will be inactive, that's for sure. People have this desire to be the first one in anything (or quasi-first), so they register like crazy, and then they leave their accounts. Other forums, for example, automatically delete member's accounts who do not update their signature within one week. I do not say that this would be the right way for this forum, but it's definitely possible to automatically kill dead accounts (well, that sounds weird^^).
Long text, short conclusion, creating an automatic kill-dead-accounts-tool isn't the hardest thing on earth, and member's accounts are precious as long as the person hiding behind his/her nick is really active. There is definitely no advantage of having an account when you don't really have any privileges over a guest, viewing-wise.