Pruning Inactive Members...

What's your policy on pruning your inactive members?

Do you and how often?
OR
Do you not and why not?

I dont. People come back - I prefer to try to lure them back.

Exactly, I never delete users that sign up.

What about users you permanently ban? Do you get rid or leave them there?

And what about those who cause trouble and insult to others? :confused:

on my forum they are warned once. If they continue, they are permanently banned. I don't allow that kind of drama and hurting others on my forum

I have not deleted any inactive members. Maybe once our member base gets a little bigger.

Ok my question, I guess I should answer ;)

I actively prune my membership. I'm not as interested in the # of members I have as I am in the quality of posts, activity, interaction, etc. So when someone becomes a member, if they haven't made one single post within 30 days of registering, they are pruned. That's why my members base isn't any larger than it is.
I've been open since September, and if I hadn't been pruning my members, I'd have nearly 600 members as close as I can recollect. But at least 400 of them, if not more, would be inactive members, most likely.

Now, I understand the things that have been said here about luring them back and such. But due to the nature of my site, I feel that if they wanted to participate, they would have, within 30 days. I have no desire or need for lurkers, I want, and have, a good core group of members who interact on a regular basis, usually daily. Others show up weekly, still others can drop in only sporadically.... but they do drop in, and they do post.

There have been a few instances when, after having been deleted, various people have returned and re-registered and do participate as time allows.

So pruning members has worked well for us, but doesn't work well for others. I think it all depends on what type of site you have and its needs and purpose.

I just dont know why anyone would prune members... Its not like it costs you anything to leave them there.

By NOT pruning and sending monthly newsletters you increase the chances of getting them back into the fold. ;)

By NOT pruning and sending monthly newsletters you increase the chances of getting them back into the fold. ;)

Trust me, I tried that. Out of all the newsletters I send out... less than half of our members receive them. The emails end up in their bulk/spam/trash folders and they forget to look for them. It has to do with the spam filters and the name of our site, I suppose. Adult content = trash to most email servers.
We've run contests, sent out site announcements, etc... and less then half of our members even knew about them.

I just dont know why anyone would prune members... Its not like it costs you anything to leave them there.

call it personal preference, I suppose.

The only reason I can see for NOT pruning them is to maintain a high member count, which I'm not interested in if they're not participating. If they register and never come back, I don't want them on my member list. :)

I never prune. Say you might sell the site in five years. What's better, having 5,000 members, or 50,000 members when you post statistics. :D It's not like a poster with zero posts takes up more than a few K in space, unless you allow members with zero posts to have stuff like an avatar/profile picture.

i occasionally prune. not on any regular basis, but just now and then.

as ohio says, for my site it's more important to have a smaller group of active members than have pages and pages of inactive ones. we still have many inactive members on our lists, which will probably get pruned at some point. people who joined up a year ago and never posted!

as for "luring" people back in.... we recently sent out an email to our top 60 posters (most of whom we hadn't seen for many months) to let them know we were still there. we've had a reasonable response, and the site is busier as a result.

hmmm....


I am still in the air on this one...

Statistically speaking, I left a site with about 60,000 members, yet over 25% of the posts are made by the top 50 posters!!!

I suspect the have about 50,000 posters will less than 2 posts...


Many of those top 50 posters (about 15 of them) are on my forum now. We just broke 40,000 posts with like 39 active members.

We are pretty much family on there. Really much more growth would make the forum difficult to 'keep up with' as a poster.

So, I think that pruning is more or less important depending on your goals. I for one, starting next month (that is six months for us) will be nixing anyone who has less than say about 10 posts and no activity in six months. I will likely prune anyone who has zero posts who has not been active in 3 months.

:)

I never prune. Say you might sell the site in five years. What's better, having 5,000 members, or 50,000 members when you post statistics. :D It's not like a poster with zero posts takes up more than a few K in space, unless you allow members with zero posts to have stuff like an avatar/profile picture.

and what do you say when the potential buyer asks.... "What percentage of those 50,000 members are active"?
I don't intend to ever sell my site, so this isn't an issue with me. But I would think that a buyer would want a fairly large percentage of active members, rather than a huge member list and only 10 - 15% of them even remember that the site exists.

i don't prune on LocoForum mainly cuz the band member are on tour most the time and don't get to the site very often.. so if I pruned, they would end up getting deleted..lol

I had a site wen i first got into websites that had 30 k users, and we would prune once a month.

Accounts that are created but never confirmed by e-mail get deleted after 10 days, no point in them existing really.

Accounts that have not been used for six months get shifted into an "Inactive" usergroup (which is not listed in the members list). If anyone in that group logs in then they immediate get moved to the registered group again.

oh now that's a good idea :) how do you set that up?

i know how to create a usergroup, but how do you set it up so that posting automatically moves them to the registered group?

You cannot do either of those things in standard vB, it's a local modification I added.

BTW, they are not moved back when they post, it's as soon as they login. :)

that's what i meant :P


care to share the method?

Accounts that are created but never confirmed by e-mail get deleted after 10 days, no point in them existing really.

Accounts that have not been used for six months get shifted into an "Inactive" usergroup (which is not listed in the members list). If anyone in that group logs in then they immediate get moved to the registered group again.


I am thinking about doing something similiar - not using a hack. Already gave my Mods a heads up that some people would be moved to this 'inactive' usergroup and if they logon to put them back...

I am interested in seeing this hack myself though.






And as far as "To Prune or Not to Prune" - again I think it is like life - Depends are where you are going.

My forum consists mainly of a splinter group off a 'big board'. My posters are VERY active, averaging about 300-500 posts per day with only 30 Active Members. I don't intend on selling as this is also where I post, so I just don't need more members to sift through when handling Admin tasks, etc, so I don't want 'dead' memberships stacking up. ;)

Managing members was a PITA in phpBB. Not the case with vB . :)
One of the first Admin tasks I set myself was to prune the membership. Stood at 4200.
Interestingly, I chose the same Group name as Paul M, Inactive members.
Moved all members who had never posted into this group and began emailing them in blocks of 10. Total stood at over 800 when I began. Have completed 320 and only 15 have replied. 90 no response, the rest of the emails bounced/returned and they have been deleted from the membership. There is no point having a member with an invalid email address or a one that does not respond to an Admin email.

Now have require verification enabled so at least you spot the no response people.
They are deleted after 30 days.


@Paul M

I'm very interested in your MODification. Would appreciate more info if possible please.

I may just go your route protoss

I should have added that the initial prune was for members who had never posted and then a further prune of not logged in for over 700 days

Last night we decided not to delete any members. If they don't follow the rule about posting in Intros first then they will stay in "Awaiting Email" group. I was told once again that member count is important (the more the better).

Member count is a number, people attach all kinds of meanings to it. Don't base your admin decisions on it.