As a routine, when I log on, I immediately go to the forums page scroll down to see who's online with me.. & then to check out who adds another year to their age (birthdays).......

Today at 07h00, we happened to be 7 members and 43 guests..... and something like 12 0r 15 people celebrating their birthdays.... and very few of those birthday guys seemed familiar, so I went into their profiles and found that only about 3 of 'em had been online this year....

There were even some that had last been active in 2003... Now with between 30 and 40 thou members, and only 7 being online, this sorta gives an imprecise percentage representation.

Would it not be more accurate if all inactive users (say after about 1 year) lapse, cause I think by that time, most had in any case forgotten their passwords and would have to re-register to become a member again......

Just a suggestion.

By the way.... Happy Birthday Jesse

Seems like a good idea, but what if they do decide to come back? I was a member on some other forums back in 2004 and 2005 and I havent had a single post till this Jan

Surely if they do come back after a year, they can re-register and understand why they've been removed... (only takes minutes to register ye-know)

Also, I'm sure/not sure..... if the reaction times will be quicker/faster if less server memory is occupied by these..... and then also at the same time, I think the guest readers should be more restricted in access compelling them to join if they really want the true benefit of this forum,.... as invariably, they outnumber the members at least 3 to 1.

Does it really matter?

Suppose not in a big way, but it was mentioned somewhere that I like stats & would like them to (at least) reflect true/realistic figures...

Also, I'm sure/not sure..... if the reaction times will be quicker/faster if less server memory is occupied by these..... I stand corrected???

This post has been edited by Ludwig Venter: Jul 20 2008, 08:22 AM

Yeah I guess it could do but then like someone said, they might just return at some point, but yeah I guess they could rejoin. I suppose if the site owner doesn't mind the stats not being true then it doesn't matter at all and if he wipes out all the members that haven't been here a year his site goes from having 30k members to maybe 10k and that don't look so good

theres no point, more work thats not needed to be honest.

Yea... It's like this other forum which I also joined (being into old vintage and classical cars) and their display says something to the effect of 43 000 members......

I've never been on there with more than 2 other "members", and I've posted all of about 20 threads (last one on 10 July) and only 1 of them have been replied and some not even has 1 x view to date... Think the most views is 5....

Now the 43 000 membership on that forum is totally misleading and made me join to get some questions answered by knowledgable people......

Yep, removing 20,000 or so people after having to maticulously check each and every one for their last post date would definately prove somewhat tedious.

Computers are a lot more clever than we give them credit for..... I.E. "select" all "Last active dates" pre (Date) "Delete" etc. etc..... Setting up a forum such as this, you surely must have a little computing background and I'm only speculating as to the routine, but these Fundis know exactly how to do it with a few asterixes and backslashes.....

Adding my 2 cents worth. There are lots of forums that I go to every day where I post nothing. An example is planetcatfish where I have maybe 20 posts in a year. Even though I don't post, I would be upset if I arrived one day to find that I had been removed from their list.

i think i agree with this post...good idea

I agree,

Just imagine how many thousends of members would need removing, also whats the point, they are registered and if they wish to come back they can.

Its not like they are taking up room or anything on the server, a name and password added to the database would not even use 1kb so no harm there.

Do old threads and posts get removed?

no?

then why should members.

just my opinion

Forums have a auto pruning option, i dont know if iwilliam has this on, but it cleans up forums (not members though).
although there is many hacks (hack meaning add on or a feature - its a simple code)

There is on You can install (Hack/feature) that auto prunes members but like i said in previous post, i dont see much point.

There is also one that will kill a account, meaning it wont delete it, it will store it in the background when it becomes inactive, if the member comes on after long time, it auto restores itself with the member even knowing it was inactive.

There is amny add ons out there, i install lots on my forum/s for complete control on everything although i mainly deal with phpbb, im not 100% sure with ipb.

Its very easy to code features in, its basically copy and paste coding.

This post has been edited by 5teady: Jul 21 2008, 03:56 AM

Well, a forum with 43000 active members, it would be pretty hectic. If you look at some of the other forums like reefcentral, you will notice that your thread gets pushed to the 3rd page after a day and sometimes 50 people see the thread and nobody replies just because the amount of threads there are. Not really fun to have to check the forum every few hours just to stay updated. What I like about medium forums like this is that people sometimes put actual thought into the thread instead of just blowing through it because there are plenty of other threads to reply to

Take Bignose and skifletch for example, they give excellent explanations and advice to complicated questions. I personally think this is a lot better than 2-3 sentence replies. Thats how it is in my experience anyways.

I agree too, I disappeared from TFF for months, then I finally came back. I was glad to see all my things intact, though, alot of TFF itself changed, like active members, the flavor of posts and topics, etc.