How long should you leave a forum signature intact?

[Beverly]

Just recently, I was going over the forum list and realized how some of our most active members are now gone for awhile. For instance, there is a member who hasn't been on forum for at least a full year. He has a couple hundred posts and was an integral part of the community while he was around. I waited awhile for him to come back. But now it seems he is gone for good.

I am pondering whether or not to remove the signature lines of such now missing members.

Though, I appreciate their effort at building posts on the forum, I would prefer that signature lines only be for active forum members. Or, at least members who drop by on occasion.

Otherwise, we are just setting our forum up to be a spammer's haven, if they know they can create 100 posts and then leave forever with forum signature intact.

If the member comes back, he is welcome to have his signature line back. I'm leaning in the direction of deleting all forum signatures for members who haven't showed up in a long time.

What would you do on your own forum?

 

[MrDawn]

I would delete the member eventually if there were a enough members joining on a weekly basis. I've been to other forums where they never delete inactive members that have been inactive for almost 7 years. I'd say it would be time to clean house every 2 years. If they're gone for 2 years without logging in, would it not be safe to say they found a different forum?

 

[Beverly]

I would delete the member eventually if there were a enough members joining on a weekly basis. I've been to other forums where they never delete inactive members that have been inactive for almost 7 years. I'd say it would be time to clean house every 2 years. If they're gone for 2 years without logging in, would it not be safe to say they found a different forum?

That's a very good point. And, the thing that concerns me is how people come to a forum and post and are active and get involved and then put up a signature line and disappear. Then it makes me think that's all they wanted. Other people are just busy, but I wonder if maybe having this rule (signature lines for active members only), would encourage more people to come back at least occasionally.

 

[R44]

I don't delete inactive members, I just don't allow signatures, period. Seems to do the job for me

 

[Andyman9491]

I'd only delete them after a certain period of time. People like to have better statistics, and so they keep them even if they're inactive. I'd just set up a system that would automatically put them inactive.

 

[Nebulous]

Just recently, I was going over the forum list and realized how some of our most active members are now gone for awhile. For instance, there is a member who hasn't been on forum for at least a full year. He has a couple hundred posts and was an integral part of the community while he was around. I waited awhile for him to come back. But now it seems he is gone for good.

I am pondering whether or not to remove the signature lines of such now missing members.

Though, I appreciate their effort at building posts on the forum, I would prefer that signature lines only be for active forum members. Or, at least members who drop by on occasion.

Otherwise, we are just setting our forum up to be a spammer's haven, if they know they can create 100 posts and then leave forever with forum signature intact.

If the member comes back, he is welcome to have his signature line back. I'm leaning in the direction of deleting all forum signatures for members who haven't showed up in a long time.

What would you do on your own forum?

I'd leave the signature alone. Seems like a trivial thing to worry about, and you're overthinking the situation. At least that's my opinion.

 

[Thomasss]

I've used MyBB most of the time, so usually if they have been gone and the links are expired or invalid, I would simply suspend their signature which removes it from the public eye, and if they came back I would unsuspend it for them, but other than that I don't do anything. I think removing it is a little too much, what if they wanted that back? XD

 

[Mikaya]

I'd just leave their sigs alone, they're not doing any harm. Who'd even check once-active members' sigs anyways? There is a chance of having dead/inactive links in their sigs, but then again that's not really a major issue. Removing the sig option for members may cause problems if they decided to come back someday. 😛

 

[Cierra]

I leave them. Signatures never really get touched unless they're violating something or are too large.

 

[Gimgak]

I would delete the member eventually if there were a enough members joining on a weekly basis. I've been to other forums where they never delete inactive members that have been inactive for almost 7 years. I'd say it would be time to clean house every 2 years. If they're gone for 2 years without logging in, would it not be safe to say they found a different forum?

You don't lose anything by keeping an account around, arbitrarily deleting them is just going to turn off anyone who wishes to come back to your community from coming back.

I didn't log into my FB account for what, maybe 3 years?

 

[Page]

Removing them isn't a good idea. You don't want to have a pissed off member coming back. I definitely don't want my other members knowing about that and good standards will disappear. Only time I will remove the signature if they broke the rules.

 

[hamxa47]

Hi everyone, have some free time to spare and want to make living out of it then you should definitely check out this blog. It contains cool tips on how to make money online using youtube.
http://learner-blog.blogspot.com

 

[CM30]

I don't really remove signature links. If the member's posted useful content before, then I just see the link as a 'payment' of sorts and leave it in.

If they just posted one liners on the other hand... guess that might be a bit different.