Forums General Discussion Zero Posters

I'm just curios now, no need for bashing.

This forum have about 4561 members with more than 0 posts and about 19'844 members with 0 post.

What is the gain in keeping all the 0posters?


Why to keep them:
* Takes time to remove them.
* Is against some moral forum rule to remove them.

Why not to keep it:
* Takes more space to store the DB.
* Slower DB queries.
* Harder to browse member names.
* Greater chance your nick is already taken.
* Better shows how many actual member this forum have.


Any more arguments? I'm curious for this in other forums too.

perhaps they like to just view the helpful comments now and again, but never really need to ask any questions.

You only have to register to post .. not read .. really I think it's a good idea for nicks to expire after x amount of time of not posting or logging in.

Yeah i agree with that, after 30 days or something, i did think it was like that anyway.

I know many people who register their names on the forum but simply don't frequent the form that often. Many #mIRC ops have zero posts but registered their nick so nobody would imposterize them (i know it's not a word). There are also many people who use to post on the old forums, but just never posted on here (ie: DragonZap). What I find interesting are the hundreds of Number nicknames that seemingly have no rhyme or reason.

However, people may simply register so they can keep their display settings... posts per page, stylesheet theme, and even new-replies counts all require you to register in order to be saved.

Perhaps we could send a complimentry email to all registered users who haven't logged on in 90 days or so, informing them that their account may be in jeopardy. Allow them another 30-90 days to log in, and then start deleting accounts. (Could even sneak an email to former regulars that dropped off the planet, asking how they're doing.)

- Raccoon

Does it really matter?


20,000 records is nothing from a database perspective. The time required to download any given webpage on here is probably 100x slower than the extra time those records put onto a query. The size those records take up is most likely tiny - 10KB sort of stuff.



Why would anyone browse member names?



Use a different name then? Sorry but nickname 'ownership' really isn't an issue IMO.



You seem to have found it out pretty easily. Does the number of users on the forum really matter?

As Raccoon pointed out, registering means users can keep settings etc.. Unless it's actually creating an issue, like there are only 25,000 possible usernames that can be registered (which I'm sure there isn't) or unless there actually is a speed/size problem concerning the database (which I'm reasonably sure there isn't) then I just don't see what the big deal is.

Oh, but all the GOOD names are taken!

like mine.

I'd like mine to expire so I can re-register it .. it's banned.

This was discussed a few times on the old board and basically (IIRC) the collective opinion was that while it'd be nice (for some people), there's no way to really know which ones to cancel. Sure it could be done via login-date but then there's vacations etc. Personally, I could care less bout the zero posters unless of course we maxed out the dbase in which case it might be prudent then to remove dead accounts

Here's my opinion.

Don't remove zero posters.
Do it by last logon date.
Perhaps once every year, it could be checked to see if there are any accounts that haven't logged on in the past 366 days at that point. I say 366 to avoid leap year confusion.

Or both by posts and last-seen date.

Since there are only a few thousand accounts that have ever posted, leave users with 1 or more posts alone, even if they dont post for another 5 years. At least then we don't have to worry about the archive containing *user-deleted* posts.

Though I would still give some form of email warning before doing such.

- Raccoon

The last things I think or care about when I come here are:

1. How many redundant members or supernumeraries there are.
2. How many posts people have.
3. Whether someone has registered mIRC or not.
4. Who the moderators should be.
5. Whether there are enough moderators or not.
6. Anything else that I haven't thought of that is equally as trivial as the abovementioned.

Let me say it another way for clarity.

if (last-seen > 366 days) && (posts == 0) { remove account }

And who's going to do all of this checking? If it's not a UBB software feature it surely would have to be done manually. I think the moderators here have enough to contend with, without adding another uneccessary task. Just my personal opinion.

well, it wouldnt be too hard to impliment a data base query. Im sure UBB has a field in the database for each user using the unix timestamp for the date of registration. You just need to compare that date, with the current, then a post count value also.

But back to previous mentions, who cares? A database can hold hundreds of thousands of database values, and stll query efficiently. Look at google for instance. You think they actually search webpages for you? No, they have it all stored in a database that is accessed when you nmake a query. Granted they probably have super computers, but even break down the numbers..

Millions apon billions of webpages--super computer
Few hungred thousand users - mirc server

I dont see a problem, do you?

I find this silly...
I dont post much.
I like to read posts and theres probably alot of people with zero posts that just reads the other posts...