Your Thoughts on 0 Post Accounts

[Lamont]

Here's another community feedback poll, wooo!

Anyone who remembers my first few weeks here will know that I've advocated for this before in this old thread. I've been an admin for a few years now and didn't want to disrespect the decision made here so have left it where it laid. However, we've been considering trying to make use of the calendar to track events and regular monthly activities such as Buena's Password and the Lottery. This would be particularly handy as then a single mod wouldn't have to remember every single start date for activities and it'd be open to any new mod to pick up a rotation task more easily.

As the calendar currently stands, averaging like 4 birthdays every day that makes it too overburdened to usefully look at.

ZZ has 42 member pages at current, 23.5 of which are 0 post accounts.

I fully understand the desire to keep as much of this as possible because it is part of the testament to ZZ's impressive age and I do not want to destroy that. So, I'm curious if it bothers anyone else.

My stance at the moment is to not touch any 0 post accounts that are within ~4ish years old. But older than 4 years and anyone that did come back probably wouldn't know their username, password, or have lost their email to login, etc etc, and would end up making a new account anyway. It's happened quite a bit and then we're just left with an unknown amount of doubles. And of course any account with even just 1 single post is with ZZ forever! ;D



In the end maybe nothing will be done, but I am curious either way ^^

[Tarlar]

I think it is a bit stupid to have all these accounts there just to have them, and personally I'd be fine with them gone as long as we save the newer-ish ones, should someone want to check back in.

[Thirdie]

Sounds reasonable enough to me. I never think about it, so it's either 'yes' or 'shrug' for me.

[Lamont]

Thought I'd check back here and wow!

Looks like it's a pretty unanimous vote. Thanks so much for your feedback all. I'll definitely put this higher on my list to clean up so we can work out a better use of our calendar for all the active members to use :3

Of course, if you haven't voted yet don't let this discourage you from adding your opinion now!

[antonius]

I have been on a few boards and never liked the idea of someone showing up to create an account only to never use it. Now, it is possible life got to them before they could do anything with the account. Another reason could be the site looked like fun but after creating the profile they realized it wasn't their cup of tea.

[Caramell 🍬]

What if we send an email out to these specific accounts? Admins should have access in the Admin Panel to send out a generated mass email and now they can add specific accounts that the emails will be sent to. It can be as simple as, "We've noticed that your account have 0 posts in the last _ days since its creation." Or if you want to add them all into a generic email, "We're emailing you to inform you that since you account's creation over 5 years ago, we've noticed that there has been 0 post activities. We are looking to clear up the purely unused, empty accounts that do not have at least 1 post on their account and would love to keep you if you don't want to be removed. Simply log back in and interact with the site in some way so we know not to remove the account, or don't log back in and interact with the site so we know that it is safe to remove the account. Thank you and hope to see you around if you'd love to stay!"

It may be a nice happy-medium than outright removing it no warning or anything? Given ZZ's usual stance on not touching accounts normally. But other than that, I'm pro 0 accounts removal. I understand that people have lives - even I've fallen prey to my own life, heck - but normally people who don't come back to their 0 post account aren't planning to. They could have made the account, found any number of reasons why they didn't like the site after account creation, or even came back and made a new account after forgetting they already had one (given our one-account rule, I'd see it more as an innocent mistake if it was like a few years later they came back and made a new one forgetting their old 0 post account).

[Lamont]

Could be a thought for the more recent 0 post accounts... Though I do have very little free time and this process would take up a lot of it.

For a sense of scale, I removed a little more than 1,000 accounts I think it was that had 0 posts (cut the member list in just over half, was ~45 pages long before). And those were only the accounts that hadn't logged in since 2012 -- there's still more! Not to mention all the ghost post accounts, which require even more time to investigate whether their post count is legit.

[antonius]

I wouldn't mind deleting most of the 0 post accounts but I am betting admin level can only do such things. Sending out an email may not be a bad thing either but at same time I wonder how many were for the advertisement posts. If we put a time table, I would say around 2018 for cut off. One good thing about this site is they do decide to come back, they can recreate the account.

[NyanRose]

Yes, but depends on how long. If they joined like...a month ago with no posts then it's probably safe to presume they aren't going to say anything. I would say similar to the 1 post accounts, since some may have been created just to advertise then leave.

[Marchbaby]

I somehow forgot to post in this thread after I voted but I am all for deleting every account with 0 posts after one year of inactivity. I know going through all of that would be a lot of work and it would be a low priority but at the same time doing maintenance like that can help clear up some of the clutter. Plus if someone did forget about us they could make a new account with no penality as going inactive is not against any rules so there would be no major issues for anyone with a deleted account. I know there were a few who posted a few times without creating a character I would not mind seeing deleted either but as that would take a ton of effort to find those would be even lower priority.