Ban rather than delete accounts?

[Pinky]

Hypothetically, if you had a user(s) who asked to be deleted but you didn't want to do that for various reasons, do you think that a ban would be more sufficient even though they have done nothing wrong but they have taken a 'delete me as I no longer want to be a part of your forum' kind of thing......

I know that when you delete members it can mess up your stats and especially from posts around the board. So by banning them as you know they don't want to return, would that be a good alternative for them, you and for your forum?

 

[jdab]

If it was just me, I'd delete the account, as they requested. You have to respect the user's wishes.

 

[Krymzn]

You could ban them and leave a message saying:

"This is a ban because you asked to be deleted but it will mess up our forum stats, if you wish to be un-banned and want to re-use this forum please email me on [[email protected]][email protected][/email]"

Something like that anyway.

 

[Guardian]

I've had this happen to me before, but just once. All I did was modify the users profile to show a different name and removed all associating information from the account to include email address. This way they have nothing connecting them to the forum but anything they have done on the forum still exists. The user in question seemed to be fine about me doing this.

 

[David]

You could ban them and leave a message saying:

"This is a ban because you asked to be deleted but it will mess up our forum stats, if you wish to be un-banned and want to re-use this forum please email me on http://[email protected]"

Something like that anyway.

On most good softwares, there is an option on whether you want to delete and remove posts, or just delete the account. It wouldn't mess up anything, there would just be a blank user alongside their posts in their mini profile.

 

[jdab]

You could ban them and leave a message saying:

"This is a ban because you asked to be deleted but it will mess up our forum stats, if you wish to be un-banned and want to re-use this forum please email me on http://[email protected]"

Something like that anyway.

On most good softwares, there is an option on whether you want to delete and remove posts, or just delete the account. It wouldn't mess up anything, there would just be a blank user alongside their posts in their mini profile.

I know on MyBB if you delete a user the post and user details remain, you just can't view their profile.

 

[Krymzn]

Yeah if you have MyBB its the best way to do this.

 

[dojo]

I don't delete accounts for people who no longer wish to be a part of my community. They can go and, if they don't want to be involved, I change their account data and ban the accounts. With spammers I delete, no reason to waste database space.

 

[Krymzn]

Of course you would ban spammers that's a no brainer 🙂

Congrats on 100 posts I noticed Dojo!!

 

[Jake]

I would make a special group, "locked", in which their title is, "locked", their name is grayed out a bit, cash is locked, etc, etc and the have access to one board where they may request re-access.

 

[Krymzn]

That is the best idea so far Jake A 🙂

 

[Nebulous]

I delete anyone who wants to be deleted. If they want just their account deleted, Ill do that and leave the posts (the posts will just be authored by "guest" now). If they want their account and posts deleted, I'll do that depending on how many posts they have. If its a person with thousands of posts, it could screw up the flow of a lot of conversations having so many posts missing.

 

[Pinky]

Some interesting ways on how to deal with this should it arise. Thanks for your feedback! :great:

 

[Dany]

I have it in the rules that I do not delete accounts or posts. I usually change the profile information and take out anything they have put in. I let people know that this is a permanent thing and will not be reversed so they better be sure.

 

[Migi]

I would respect the user wish and delete the account. I'm not the type to fuss over the forum's statistics or whatever it is; all I want is that both side is happy. If deleting the account is what they want, then sure.

On a side note, of course, I delete spam bot accounts right away. XD