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Haruspex

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30 Aug 2007
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Indeed, there are over 38.000 registered members, and not even 1000 of them active.
While they don't do much, meaning they don't bother anyone, and some may at some point become active again, I am of the opinion that a majority of them should be pruned.
I do not mean those people who for some reason decided to stop posting on the forums, rather those who made an account for some reason unknown even to them, and never made a single comment or returned (logged in again).
I mean, I am sure the sql tables can handle it and all, but honestly, the whole forum would look cleaner without all the "pseudo-members".
 
they don't negatively effect anyone plus i doubt that the moderators would care to go through this trouble. also having a lot of members gives the appearance that this site is very popular to those people who wish to sign up.

raverboy
 
Having 38 thousand accounts and not even a thousand active users gives me the "no one gives a shat" impression. Now I know that the forum is well-maintained, but outsiders do not.
It also shows that only 1/38 people actually stay.
 
Considering that its at most 370~ MB (@ 12 KByte of l33t SQL+avatar average /user) of storage that is never called on, I really don't see why anyone would bother when the actual forum engine probably takes up about 2-5 MB. The posts on the other hand could maybe use a prune I suppose.

As for publicity, the active users and current users speaks a lot louder; you'd have to actually go an dig through the user listing to find how many people bother signing up, and I think you can only do it afterwards anyway.

There would undoubtedly be more phat bytes wasted on recovering false positives.

And besides, its not exactly uncommon. Anywhere from Youtube to TheRegister to SA, SHJa and whatever the hell else tends to have even worse ratios.

Time would be better spent on spam bot killing.
 
This has been mentioned before in the past and no doubt will come up in the future. As for deleting old accounts or dead accounts the only people capable of doing that are admin and I don't think they want to spend time chasing up 38 000 accounts.

Why people join and don't them post I have no idea. They could just be after some info or just join on a whim. Other people just lurk, never adding, just watching. It isn't unusual. I post on RD net and that has almost 60 000 members, but its active members closer to 1000/1500. As Malamis san said it isn't unusual and there are places with a lot more worse ratios.
 
I understand exactly the points you are making, and I can't argue with them, apart from one, that it does not affect a thing.

Just look at https://jref.com/forum/memberlist.php
If you are so courageous as to even try to use it, I stand in awe of your bravery.
Try to find anything there, and you will find tides of what you never wanted to.

As for pruning the posts, I think that would actually cause harm in a certain way.
This forum is in my opinion an archive as well, there are some very valuable posts that still have actuality, that still are useful. Especially the advices given in the language learning subforums, and the stories or guides of some members.
 
If they're not wasting space and we dont use it, the only thing I can think of pruning them is so the owner can downgrade the service plan he's on. 100gb/month -> 70gb/month, whatever.
 
Having 38 thousand accounts and not even a thousand active users gives me the "no one gives a shat" impression. Now I know that the forum is well-maintained, but outsiders do not.
It also shows that only 1/38 people actually stay.


on the contrary, it shows that you 37/38 of these people actually have a life outside the forum world.

If they're not wasting space and we dont use it, the only thing I can think of pruning them is so the owner can downgrade the service plan he's on. 100gb/month -> 70gb/month, whatever.

when organizing a company, if you can afford it, it's always better to have more space than less. you wouldn't want F yourself in the end.

raverboy
 
Well, it's one thing to have a few extra spots open. Having 4000 with no one applying does nothing.

That's why I said, only reason to prune is to save costs. I mean, if currently we're using 30 GB/month, cap it at 35. No way are we going to randomly use 5GB a month and if someone new joins you can always up it.
 
Thanks for your concern, but currently we only prune members who failed to confirm their registration (for whatever reason). Those account for about 40 members a week. I am reluctant to delete other (inactive) members, because they might decide to return in the future or - if they have posted in the past - their contributions would show up as "guest posts".

We employ two dedicated servers, so bandwidth is not a big issue (although we use a multiple of what putrefaction assumed in his previous post) for JREF alone. So yes, I wish the participation rate was higher, but generally I believe that the conversion rate (inactive -> active users) corresponds to what we see on other big boards.
 
Well not to pry but if you cut out those who haven't posted for two years--I am young but I realize that as you get older, 2 years isn't much, but 2 years on the internet is like a century--you may be able to cut it down to 1 dedicated server. That'll support a lot of members. It'll certainly become a tight-knit community for sure.
 
Hmmm... I don't really understand how pruning the non-active members would somehow help the board become more lively. I mean, those who post post, and those who don't don't. If the bandwidth is not an issue as admin has said, what is? Does having the total number of members (out of which many are non-active) displayed have negative effects on attracting and keeping new members? Maybe I am missing the point. 😌
 
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