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The Tri-monthly Pruning Of Inactive Members Thread!


Phillyman

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Pruning the database allows the site to operate faster for those who are actually using it, incentivises people who are serious about wanting to be here to post on occasion (seriously, all you have to do is log in once a year and post a couple things to be exempt from the pruning), and frees up potential user names from non-participants to be used by someone who might actually contribute from time to time.

But honestly, most of it has to do with the fact that Phillyman used to enjoy sacrificing the blood of virginal forum accounts to whatever dark, demented power holds this place together, and this was the best way to ensure said power's satisfaction. :)

I would think any increase in efficiency would be minuscule at best, though I'm always in favor of sacrifices.

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Guest s1500

IMO it's a waste of time. When there's other things to do on this site, like fixing up the wiki, I see pruning inactive members to be a waste of time. Other sites probably don't do it, and if they do, it's not celebrated.

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  • Retromags Curator

From what I understand, it's a resources issue. Every new member who registers creates a new slot in the database, making it that much larger, more unwieldy, and (most importantly) slower. Think about an Excel spreadsheet that gets larger and more complex with every new row and column and formula you have to plug into it, and you should get an idea.

Pruning the database allows the site to operate faster for those who are actually using it, incentivises people who are serious about wanting to be here to post on occasion (seriously, all you have to do is log in once a year and post a couple things to be exempt from the pruning), and frees up potential user names from non-participants to be used by someone who might actually contribute from time to time.

But honestly, most of it has to do with the fact that Phillyman used to enjoy sacrificing the blood of virginal forum accounts to whatever dark, demented power holds this place together, and this was the best way to ensure said power's satisfaction. :)

*huggles*

Areala

Exactly, it was to keep our database small. Plus it helped when I would send out a mass email, why would I email people who had 0 posts and were inactive for over 1 year. And to S1500...it took all of about 5 minutes to complete.

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I suppose since you were deleting as much as 900 members and have been doing this for some time the difference in database-size probably is significant. It's at least one thing that can be done to keep things efficient and server costs down (?).

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  • 4 months later...
  • Retromags Curator

I completely forgot about doing this. It's also something Phillyman never showed me how to do. Once I figure it out, I will continue with it.

Edit: Okay, I think I kind of got it, sort of. I created a new group called Inactive Members. Out of the 2635 members in the Newcomers group, 2351 of them have been inactive for the last 6 months. Not all of them have zero posts; they just haven't signed in.

In a few days I will run the program that deletes people who haven't signed in for a year and do not have any posts. Hopefully it will only delete those people.

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Dunno why people think it's a problem deleting inactive users.

I'd rather have a core of 300 active members who are actively contributing to the site than 3300 people just because it makes it look like it's a really popular site. The reality is those additional people only signed on to get access to the download links at a time when you couldn't access the links without being a member. Now everything is available via MU none of those leechers will ever do anything other than grab and run so they're a total waste of database space in my opinion.

If I were to be totally frank though the ONLY people here worth anything are those that scan mags or raws and make them available for download along with those who take time out to contribute to the wiki etc if they aren't able to contribute scans. This group are the ones that make the site .... everyone else .... pffffft!!!! As far as I am concerned you could close off the forums to everyone bar those and you know what ... you'd find that the forum posters are generally from the active group anyway.

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I'd rather have a core of 300 active members who are actively contributing to the site than 3300 people just because it makes it look like it's a really popular site.

Don't get me wrong, I wholeheartedly agree. It's just that I had hope that more users were a bit more active than that although it's obvious that they're not.

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  • Retromags Curator

Well, every inactive member that was moved to the Inactive Members group should have received a notification saying they are inactive and that they should visit the site. In a few days I will prune those with 0 posts and who haven't been here for a year. Hopefully some of them will come back and be active, though this is a niche site, and has always had a small core of users who regularly posted in the forums.

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  • Retromags Curator

I've looked into installing the arcade again. There is a mod that is supposed to make it work with the current forum software that is installed. I have been reluctant to install it in case it messes things up.

It's been kind of dead around here, so it is definitely something I will look into doing very shortly. I have to make a backup of the site first, and then give it a go. It might be something I start this weekend even :)

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  • Retromags Curator

The thoght is there for sure; I already installed the mod that is supposed to get it working with the servers used by the current host. Then I got disracted.

Right now I am trying to get the inactive member pruning tool working properly. Once I do that, I will make a back up of the site and try installing the arcade. I can't promise it will work.

If it does work, then I can look into that Battle system thing that was here at one point too.

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Sounds good then. Do you have any of the old files backed up? I know when I was operating the arcades at another site or two it took forever to search sites for decent games and then time to DL them, test, and move 'em to the server. Then again if I still have access I may be able to retrieve some to get ya started.

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  • Retromags Curator

Seems like I got the pruning thing working so it only deletes members with no posts who haven't logged in for 365 days. That being said, 1100 member and change have been deleted. Probably closer to 1200 with the trial and error from the last couple of days.

There are now only 211 Newcomers, and 1398 Inactive Members.

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