"Nick Reservations"

[Johnnie F.]

Some people do register on Forums but do not make their first post within reasonable time. On this forum accounts that have not been used for 180 days or a first post made, i. e. when the non-posting holder hasn't logged in for 180 days, will be removed. That means the nicks are open for registration by somebody else again. The original holder can also register again, unless somebody else does before him. Exceptions are made for people who already contributed by posting (except dumb spam of course). Their accounts won't be deleted to keep also their avatars, signatures and Karma on the forum. Accounts logged in regularly won't be deleted, either.

[george1]

A brave move indeed, be funny to see thaivisa do that and go from 80,000 to just over 10k

[Johnnie F.]

Some forums go much further even and delete accounts that were inactive for a much shorter period and by that try to force people to post regularly to keep their accounts. Most of these forums aren't actually read by anyone; there are only members scanning through posts to find a spot for a nonsense comment to keep their account from getting deleted.

[george1]

One of the forums I belong to has turned crap like that, for download slots you need 1 post per slot, so every thread has an opening post and 300 replies saying "thanks." Now they are threatening to ban people who just do "Thanks" posts.

[Johnnie F.]

We still keep getting a lot of registrations for the purpose of link spamming on the member list.I don't want to go to the hassle of scanning all new registrations and deciding which ones are most likely spam and which might be true. There is the possibility of erring and deleting accounts of sincere new members. But new members should contribute within a reasonable period. Until now this period had been 180 days. I think 90 days is far more than sufficient.

So from now on accounts that haven't been used for initial posting and haven't been logged into for 90 days will be just deleted. You can simply register again with the same nick and email address.

This does not apply to accounts that have been used for posting, except where the posts made were deleted as worthless spam.

Please do understand this measure of optimization.

[Toddy]

Seems eminently sensible to me. I don't know why people bother to join if they are not going to post at all.