Deleting unused profiles

[InPhiKnight]

Profiles which has not been Logged IN for about 1 to 2 years must be deleted.

[Kashif]

yeah exactly my point

[Kashif]

my point is the registered one with 0 posts

[InPhiKnight]

Their profiles should not be deleted if the have left any reason for being away.

[A-Man]

I totally agree with that. u can even make a system that sends these users an e-mail informing them about the deletion of their profile.

[Silverthorn]

We have actually done this in the past; that's why you probably won't find any user with zero posts and a user-id of <2135 except for 5 people that avoided the wrath of deletion. Basically, it's easy to run a script which auto-deletes those users that have 0 posts (and a last-login-date which is 2 years in the past), however, this has become a bit obsolete. The table that stores ALL user information has a size of merely 1MB. Therefore, this bad boy here would be sufficient to store it all:

Spoiler (Click to View)

That doesn't include anything such as avatars and the like but, when you look into the memberlist, there are actually very few users that have a custom profile picture. As of the time of writing this post, there are 601 Zero-posters. That is still less than the 1-24-posters. Personally, if I had a chance to revert the last user-pruning, I'd revert it.Yes, it was me who initiated that, no, I'm not sorry about it
Either way, I don't see much of a sense in deleting those unused profiles. The data they create is negligible. Also, did you notice that there are generally no "awaiting activation"-users? This is because an automated task deletes such users that fail to complete the registration within 3 days. Most likely that those were just fake-profiles anyways.

Long story short, give a better reasoning. Else, this is not going to happen.

[LutiChris]

Profiles which has not been Logged IN for about 1 to 2 years must be deleted.

If you delete a user who has posted a fair amount of their time and work
alot of their conversations with other LFE member's will be lost and look ridiculous to the public's eye
Example: we had Zab delete his account, he got rid of entire thread (in the forum games section)
It was viewed and shared by many of the contributing members (it was honestly such a disappointment)
Some threads have been made by those who have been inactive (like you said) for over a year or two but some of them come back like Magnamancy
Likewise i have an old pre-existing user that created the "post-your-stupid-demon-sprite-here" thread, and I'm sure i'd be a bit upset if that was taken down, due to my absence...
Thats just my opinion. A user may decide that one day he or she will pay a visit to LFE, and they find out their account has been deleted without their consent. I feel thats just wrong.

Their profiles should not be deleted if they have left any reason for being away.

do they really need a reason to leave before they find out that we have already terminated their stay?
Faidan has left us for more than 3 years, halted his ben10 project, and didn't leave a reason why he left?
hmmm... put yourself in his situation if he came back and wanted to work on his project and found out that his work & his comments had been deleted