Staffing Purging accounts

[Morrigan 1,826]

So something that comes across the table every once in a while is account or character purges for inactive characters or players. My question for people is, do you do it? If you do why do you do it? Does it help or hurt anything?

[KARA BELLA 18]

I mostly just move inactive character accounts to a group hidden from the member list and leave them there for awhile.  After a few months or so if the players haven't come back then I might work on purging the accounts.  However when I have done that I haven't really noticed that it helped or hindered anything.  I think it really just depends on the admin(s) preferences and what not.   I think some people do it becuase it's kind of a clean thing.  Having a bunch of unused accounts lying around can be an issue for some.

[Orchid 12]

Personally, I do account purges rather than activity checks.

 

I noticed that with traditional Activity Checks folks will panic, log in and make the required posts, and then skip out until the next check, leaving the rest of the more active members without threads for a month.

 

Every now and again I check on activity. If I see accounts that haven't been logged into for a few weeks, and there's no activity, I just quietly get rid of them. If the member comes back, they're welcome to re-register and just copy paste their old application, and we just get them going again. So far, none of the members I've done this with have come back, or spoke out about it being unfair. 

 

Every week I go through our applying accounts and delete them after about a week, as that's how our holds work. I don't see it hurting, mostly because it frees up those accounts that were an apply and run.  Had a lot of those recently.

[Guest Archaic Cyborg]

It depends on the site / the community. Sometimes I delete abandoned accounts after # months, while in other communities I might keep them, I just rename them. But, I always delete inactive accounts for applicants, if it's been 2 weeks and they have disappeared off the face of the earth.

[Rune 1,099]

I enjoy my purges.

 

I clear out accounts with no posts/that haven't been on since they were made a week or two after they're created. I purge untouched but approved characters every other month after they fail an activity check.

 

I don't see either or helping/hurting. Create-and-runs won't be back (and if they will, it isn't any effort to recreate an account) and I can easily dig out the old app for those that didn't make the AC for them to reapply. But we also have really lax ACs/posting requirements.

[Amelia 25]

I have generally done character purges through activity checks or because they had not been online since a long time. Most of the time I have not run into any issues with it. Even the people that register and never put their app, they usually never come back.

If people do come back after that things can easily get restored as we keep the apps and posts in our archives. I see no problem in cleaning up dead accounts, as long as its not too had to get back. 

[VirusZero 176]

While I do mention that I can purge accounts them, fact is I very rarely ever do. I generally don't bother because they don't really hurt anything on my site. I mean if someone joins up and never posts it's not quite the same as if on other roleplays where they end up tying up a name/playby or whatever. 

 

That said I refuse to delete any account that has made at least one (non-spam) post. I've had people vanish for years suddenly show up again. (They've never really stuck around long, but they did come back for a bit at least...) 

[Dawn 1]

I rarely delete accounts, but I do add them to a group called Inactive. I add people to this group after a month of not posting. This group has special rules on it that keeps them from posting in RP boards, and then if they decide to come back they can send me a message asking to be allowed into the RP boards again. 

[Honorem 219]

I remove the accounts that haven't posted anything, or are the drive-by appers who leave a WIP or finish an app, then disappear. Basically if they haven't started posting in character. Otherwise, they just get put to inactive usergroup until they return. Unless, say they haven't returned for a year? Then maybe I'd delete them.

Edited August 12, 2016 by Honorem
Formatting

[CovertSphinx 710]

Depends on the site's particular needs for me. I used to be on top of moving inactive characters to a special sub-board and getting rid of abandoned accounts; then I decided to save myself some time and effort by being a little "lax" in my cleaning. Just because I liked things clean and tidy and for some stupid reason thought that if I kept up on it, people would pay more attention to the characters they already have.

 

As of right now I:

Purge any account with 0 posts after about a month (usually that's when I get around to even glancing at it to be honest).

WIPs only - Account and WIP get deleted if the player doesn't at least log in after a month or so
Inactive Characters - Currently I have a one character per account set up (because of the item and money system); so after three months (or whenever I get around to it) I usually just move the profiles into a different board but leave the account (unless somebody new is asking for that character in case of canon).

Inactive Accounts - I usually purge them around a year, give or take.

[Lunaala 18]

I don't do account purges because I'm lazy.

 

We're a big site with a lot of accounts, and if it becomes a problem of canons taking up names, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. It's a very loose RP too so I don't want to make anyone think they're unwelcome to return despite being inactive.