Am I crazy?

Discussion in 'Member and Staff Management' started by Code Monkey, May 11, 2013.

  1. Code Monkey

    Code Monkey Regular Member

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    I'm moving a 9 year old site from vBulletin to xenForo. That part's not crazy. However, I deleted about 2000 members to get ready for the move. Now all of these members had 0 posts. Many were spammers, or unauthenticated registrations (wannabe spammers), and many were members that simply joined years ago to use the many tools I created for a certain game. The game is shut down now, they never posted, they'll probably never be back.

    Some might say this is crazy because of the high member "stat" looks good. I felt it looked bad to have so many o posters. Plus most of the emails were no good anymore and mailing out to that many bad emails just get's you spam banned.

    So I did it. Not turning back. I feel good about it.

    Am I crazy?

    :nailbiting:
     
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  2. Marc

    Marc Checkmate - Game Over

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    No. However, if you felt that there was a hint of users that created an account and would have returned (even without that game you mentioned), you could have sent out an email notifying the 0 post inactive users that their accounts were at risk if they do not visit the forum in X days.
     
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  3. Code Monkey

    Code Monkey Regular Member

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    Well, I didn't delete anyone that had logged on in the last two years.
     
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  4. WEfail

    WEfail Regular Member

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    They likely will never be back if they haven't been there in 2 years. :)
     
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  5. petertdavis

    petertdavis Old Timer

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    The only thing I'd have considered doing different would be to have sent those 2000 members an email giving them the chance to log in to preserve their account. But, out of 2000, you'd probably have gotten 1950 bounced emails and that's not a good thing.
     
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  6. WEfail

    WEfail Regular Member

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    in the old days I would preserve accounts thinking potential buyers cared, but they dont. unless you can show mass mail open stats saying that people are reading....

    I try not to even temp ban / ban anymore. I just straight delete people. I feel more empowered doing that.
     
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  7. boatswife

    boatswife Regular Member

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    After two years, get rid of the dead weight!
     
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  8. limcid

    limcid Regular Member

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    I think what really matters is the content of the site. If those members weren't contributing anything, then I don't see how they could really factor into what really matters.
     
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  9. Code Monkey

    Code Monkey Regular Member

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    I agree. I'm sure some would say the high user numbers look good.
     
  10. maksim

    maksim Regular Member

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    Lol. High user counts.... you want to see high user counts? Turn off captcha and or email validation.

    I think the number of members is less relavant than the total number of unique visitors to your forum. I would venture to say most of those "members" were just spam bots.

    A lot of people get caught up into a high member count.... instead of focusing on the ratios that matter.

    Posts/Topics per Active Member.
    Active Members as a % of total registered.
    Active Members as a % of total visitors

    etc.

    Look at the results.

    I say nice job. You did what most people would not do... and that is to get rid of dead accounts. It is far nicer to see a community with less registered members but more activity... then a forum with 100,000 users and 50,000 posts. lol.
     
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  11. ConfabIt

    ConfabIt Regular Member

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    If I'd kept all the spam bots that have registered to my forum, my members list would be in it's thousands right now. Needless to say I haven't done that; the only thing that annoys me is new legit users end up with an ID of like 1573.

    No, I don't think you're crazy. It's a waste of time having dead weight around. If anything I'd be more likely to join a forum that is honest about it's total user base.
     
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  12. Dan Hutter

    Dan Hutter aka Big Dan

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    Not at all. I prune useless members when moving between software.
    • Members w/ 0 posts and haven't logged in a year
    • Members in awaiting confirmation that have have 0 posts and no login for 30 days
    • Banned spammers though not banned members with actual posts.
     
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  13. Lairston

    Lairston Regular Member

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    No I don't think you're crazy. There's no point in letting them hog up database room unless you have unlimited.

    I started deleting the awaiting activation emails response after 5 days a while back.
     
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  14. Code Monkey

    Code Monkey Regular Member

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    I'm glad everyone agrees.

    I didn't delete the one time posters Dan. They probably aren't coming back but I hate to see orphaned posts.
     
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  15. Code Monkey

    Code Monkey Regular Member

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    The problem with that peter is that with a database that old the percent of emails that are bad is high. Too many dead address attempts will get you spam banned from the more stringent places like AOL and Verizon.

    And Peter, that's what I did, That's what happened and that's why I nuked them. :D

    I'm still trying to get off of AOL's list. sigh
     
  16. Liam W

    Liam W The best of the best ;)

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    I would't say you were crazy, but I would want to know how you can get more than 2000 spammers :)

    I have none ;)
     
  17. andyred

    andyred Regular Member

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    You did the right thing by getting rid of the dead weight when moving over to xenForo.
    At least now you will have more clearer stats and know we're you stand in regards to user count and their activity etc

    What are you going to do with your site now, rebrand it into another gaming forum?
     
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  18. carlalexander

    carlalexander Regular Member

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    I don't think that you are crazy at all, if someone has not been active for two years, then you can joyfully delete them, but sending them an email notification of your deleting them from your site wouldn't hurt either.
     
  19. Code Monkey

    Code Monkey Regular Member

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    Well as I stated above, most were people that registered to use my many game tools. Maybe 200 were spammers from 10 years ago when there weren't a lot of prevention methods yet. Back then we would just ban them, change their post and avatar to something stupid and degrading and everyone would post smack in the thread. lol

    It's the same site. But never again will I let a site lock down to one game. It leaves your site at the mercy of that game and it's developers.
     
    Brandon likes this.
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