Do you ban or delete inactive accounts on your forum?

[Deleted member 49125]

Why or why not? When I created mine, I had emailed members & then when I didn’t hear back from them, I deleted the account. Especially those who register but never post or just make one post. Since doing Post Exchanges, I don’t delete accounts anymore. Who am I to tell someone when or how often they have to log on. They took the time to register; they should have the option to come back at any time.
On my forum & seems to be on Proboards in general, members can delete their own accounts. I like being able to delete my own account as applicable.
Now I have seen owners actually ban inactive accounts. To me, banning is when they are doing something wrong. I don’t feel it’s called for to ban a member simply for not posting.
If you do delete accounts, what is the criteria you go by?

 

[Page]

I just let them be Unless that user requests their accounts to be removed, but they have to have legit reasons as to why as we or I do not allow it, even so, they can get their accounts removed but not their content, content stays but it's listed as guest.

Those inactive accounts, that are real with content I do not remove. The only times when I remove accounts are if people or bots join and they get banned right away.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

I delete spam accounts or accounts that wish to be deleted.

Other than that, if your account goes inactive, it just stays there.

I'll merge accounts when people forget and create new accounts.

 

[Deleted member 49125]

I delete spam accounts or accounts that wish to be deleted.

Other than that, if your account goes inactive, it just stays there.

I'll merge accounts when people forget and create new accounts.

I wish Proboards had that option to merge accounts. It would save a lot of hassle!

 

[Page]

I wish Proboards had that option to merge accounts. It would save a lot of hassle!

Well, end of the day it's free

 

[Nomad]

I have a law written where it states that any account that lies dormant for 6 months will be banned or deleted. However, I have never enforced this law on my forums.

 

[Shortie_]

I have many banned and inactive accounts on my forum but I never choose to delete them as that either can make it easier for someone to evade a ban or it can put someone off wanting to be part of your forum if you deleted their account for inactivity. Sometimes things happen in people's lives and they have to step away from things like forums, I would hate if I had to do that and then came back when things were better and found that my account had been deleted. In fact, I have had that happen in the past, and once I realized that my account had been deleted and I never bothered again. I always think that keeping the account there does no harm and you could potentially be deleting someone who could have been an active member of the community.

 

[Cory]

I don't delete inactive accounts because you never know if that user may come back to your forum to contribute. If you deleted an inactive account that contributed a lot to your forum originally due to being inactive, that would seem like a slap in the face to me.

 

[zappaDPJ]

I never delete anything, accounts or content. Spam accounts get banned and unwanted content gets moved to a dump box. I like to keep an audit trail and that gets lost once you start deleting things.

 

[Deleted member 31696]

The only accounts I delete or ban are spam accounts.

 

[Page]

How many spam accounts that we all get more so then real people joining as in 2022 and 2023 I seen a high amount of numbers

 

[Nebulous]

I get why people delete members with zero posts sometimes .... but banning a member just because they haven't logged-in in a while is just plain rude. Imagine they come back and see that they've been banned. You just lost that member for life. They'll never try to get the ban lifted or make a new account.

 

[Jay™]

I just leave them, it doesn't hurt to let the account sit as they may come back. 🙂

 

[AussiePaul]

Yeah, every few months I delete low posting accounts. We get about 60 members online a day, looks better with 60 members online a day out of 200 members rather than 300 members. Don't delete those that may simply go missing. Recently one of our most active members has vanished, he's done 53,000 posts, won't delete him.