Administrators, please delete 33,400 member accounts!

This occurred to me when I writing this thread, but I only now decide something should be done about this:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

The thing is that I see ATS and all its subdirectories as a privilege not a right. This is why only the contributing members of ATS should be allowed to stay on. As of today we have around 52,300 registered member but only about 18,900 of which actually posted at least once on ATS. The other 33,400 have done NOTHING at all to contribute to the expansion and evolution of ATS. I see no reason to keep them on as members and so I would like to see them deleted. But since everyone deserves a chance I think a warning should go out to ALL MEMBERS via U2U stating if they didn't post at least once their account will be deleted and their access to ATS terminated. Also I would like to see stricter rules for new registered members, stating in the TOS that they must post a minimum of at least 2 posts in their first two weeks of joining. If that requirement is not meet, we will know this person is not serious enough to be allowed access to ATS and so terminated. I think by doing this we should greatly cut down on spammers and "useless member" while at the same time helping improve the quality of ATS.

To make this easier on SO and anyone else need to do this, we should make new categories in the member directories/listings. These being the following:

Active members: Members who posted at least once in the past 30 days
Inactive members: Members who meet all posting requirements but have not posted in the last six months
Posing members: Members who have posted at least once in their ATS lifetime (applies only to old members) (two posts for new members)
Pending members: New members that have yet to meet posting requirements (Minimum of 2 posts in first two weeks of registering
Zero Accounts: Member that have not posted at least once on ATS or any of its subsites (applies to old members and Pending accounts)
Banned Members: Members who have been Banned from ATS
Unapproved Accounts: accounts not yet approved or declined ATS access
Declined Accounts: Accounts not allowed access to ATS
All Accounts: All member/nonmember accounts given ID numbers

Only accounts that meet posting requirements (1 for old accounts and 2 for new) should be considered a member a counted as such. All accounts not meeting posting requirements will be striped of member status and access to all ATS sites but will still be in the accounts records. Therefor effectively deleting around 33,400 "members".

Sources: www.abovetopsecret.com... (page 956, total members)

www.abovetopsecret.com... (page 337, total number of posting members)

What do you say Admins? Doesnt it sound like a good idea? Also what do my fellow (posting) members think?

I'm guessing that most of the 33,400 who have not made a post are readers and not typers .

I bet many people get membership so they can get the 'full' ATS reading experience.

One thing you forget:

A lot of people join up, to just read through the topics (I have at least 3 friends who do this) they do not wish to add to the site, because they do not see themselves as knowing enough however they can keep track of topics they find interesting, etc, if they are members.

If people just want to read, they can do so without having to become members after all most (like 99%) is open to the public. Not only that only members should get access to "special" forums as a reward for contributing. You dont have to be a member JUST to read. Thats how I see it. Don't post = delete.

[edit on 26-7-2005 by beyondSciFi]

It would not really be fair to those who just read. Many sites have inactive members.

Why get rid of them, all it does is spare some user names.. nothing more.

I dont see why you care if there are non posting members . If people wish to join and just read untill one day they decide to post that in my opinion is their right. Deleting because of non posting will lead to more useless posts , not less. Other BBS forums that I read have gone way down in quality when a mandatory posting requirement has been started.

If you dont have anything worthwhile to contribute - than dont post. If you would like to comment or start a thread of your own, then by all means do so. I see no reason to delete subscribers as they cause no harm.

Thats my 2 cents

Alias Jones

Not only that only members should get access to "special" forums as a reward for contributing.

ATS already utilizes this in the RATS (really above Top Secret) Forum, where you need 5000 points to subscribe plus subscription points monthly. Only way you get acces to that is by gathering points through contribution.

Originally posted by Alias Jones
If you dont have anything worthwhile to contribute - than dont post.

Please there are MANY posts in ATS, BTS and PTS that some of us think are not "worthwhile". Its just a matter of opinion and this is mine.

Originally posted by Alias JonesI see no reason to delete subscribers as they cause no harm.

But hey don't help ATS out either, ATS access in not a right but a privilege and so you have to EARN that right.

Inactive members do get purged now and then (I think it's every six months or so, something like that), where if they haven't signed on in a certain time period, the accounts are purged...really just for board maintenance. SO could elaborate (and correct any figures errors there) I'd imagine.

We do have lurkers though, and as long as they've signed in, they would be "active". Are you suggesting to purge the lurkers? Can't agree on that one. Many of us were likely lurkers before getting more involved with the site....

How do you know they don't help ATS?

They are readers..
they show a thread to a friend..who is a reader AND a typer..
Friend says COOL..I'm signing up!
the friend signs up...and becomes a contributor..

Ok... How about changing my 2 week and 2 post minimum to say one month. That should me MORE then enough for a person to decide if they would like to post on something. After all how hard could it be to find something to comment on, there are SOOOOO many topics on ATS.

I didn't post right away when I signed up. I was far too busy trying to catch up on everything actually posted first.

That may be a holdover from my newsgroup days, where if you didn't read every single post and dared to bring up something previously discussed, you got flamed.

Even if they don't contribute posts, they do contribute to the statistics and page views, and that helps the Big Bosses get decent rates for advertising, resulting in things like new servers.

About the only benefit I could see to removing the users would be on data storage/transfer. Clearing out a database of unused records is almost always a good idea, speeds things up a little. But it's not exactly like we're talking records containing megabytes or gigabytes of data. A member profile is probably what, 1K, and even that's probably stretching it to an extreme. So you remove 33 MB worth of data overall. That's not enough to rationalize 33K people no longer having access to their site if they decide to post. It certainly wouldn't make any type of noticeable difference on our end of things.

Originally posted by beyondSciFi
But hey don't help ATS out either, ATS access in not a right but a privilege and so you have to EARN that right.

Given what you said immediately above this, that's also a matter of opinion. How do you know that a good portion of those 33K members didn't bring in some of the contributing members? How do you know that they aren't referring the site to other venues? They may be citing ATS in websites/blogs/whatever all around the world, giving us recognition as well as more people interested in the topics discussed here.

And you are correct, we don't have a right to use ATS; it is a priviledge. But that priviledge isn't granted necessarily on whether a member does contribute, but more on the potential they have for contributing (if I remember the application process correctly). And on a daily basis we see members have that priveledge revoked because they tried to contribute (albeit in a misdirected or poor manner). I personally would rather see 300K members and no posts than every single 18K member posting spam or garbage. I'd put my money on those who maintain the database here feel pretty close to the same as well.

I dunno, I can't think of any real justification for this. It's almost like removing people's right to vote because they never voted. Doesn't mean that they never will, and doesn't mean they don't deserve the opportunity if they decide to use it.

Originally posted by Gazrok
Inactive members do get purged now and then (I think it's every six months or so, something like that), where if they haven't signed on in a certain time period, the accounts are purged...really just for board maintenance. SO could elaborate (and correct any figures errors there) I'd imagine.

We do have lurkers though, and as long as they've signed in, they would be "active". Are you suggesting to purge the lurkers? Can't agree on that one. Many of us were likely lurkers before getting more involved with the site....

While I agree with your purging routine, I think it lacks at what the original poster was trying to get at.. infact, I want to point out something even more evident to his original idea..

How many people are signing up, strictly because when you don't sign up, you're told that if you sign up you won't see advertisements?

Now, are these members filling out the quick form signing up to be a member, or just to browse without having to contribute?

This is really a double edged sword.. currently we're only allowing so many new people in at once.. in waves so to speak.. how many of the people we deny would actually contribute to the website? And how many do we let in that do absolutly nothing except answer an approval email and get to browse without ads?

Seems unfair we're letting people in that do absolutely nothing to the website.. and we're turning down potential contributors..

I've been here for almost 2 years now, and I've seen great contributors come and go by the month.. If you want ATS to grow, you need to get people involved.. and if they don't want to get involved, then we should charge them to view our contributions. Pay to be amused.

It is our contributions that actually drive ATS is it not? And all this action costs money right?

Originally posted by beyondSciFi
If people just want to read, they can do so without having to become members after all most (like 99%) is open to the public. Not only that only members should get access to "special" forums as a reward for contributing. You dont have to be a member JUST to read. Thats how I see it. Don't post = delete.

[edit on 26-7-2005 by beyondSciFi]

Log out and look at the site. It is spammerific.

Are you kidding, its not that bad, besides you can still read almost all posts. Not seeing ads is not a good enough reason to be a member. Almost no spam is a reward for being a member, but it should not be the reason why you join.

[edit on 26-7-2005 by beyondSciFi]

Originally posted by beyondSciFi
Are you kidding, its not that bad besides you can still read almost all posts. Not seeing ads is not a good enough reason to be a member.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I've gone to greater lengths to disable ads from other sites when possible. I can't stand them myself. Had I even only wanted to read the posts here and not contribute, if I knew I'd be coming here on a regular basis I would've still registered for that reason. What do I have to lose? Maybe 5 mintues of my time at most?

And whether the people ever click the ads or not, it still looks good when you're trying to get a click-through account set up to say "I have 33K people who are registered members of my site."

Then my question becomes: So? They are not bothering you so why do you need to bother them?

Why oh why does there need to be such pointless drama. If it is a problem for the maintainers of the site then they will deal with it however they see fit.

Heh, from a technical point of view purging inactive accounts is an okay idea, but from an advertising point of view its a bad one indeed. If you cut back to only active posting members ATS wouldnt be too desireable a place to slap adverts, nor would it have more of the puffed up sense of size given the vast number of non-posting and inactive members.

What would be the actual benefit of deleting these non-contributing members..? Saving kilobytes? Bandwidth? And in what way are these members hurting the continuous growth of ATS..? I just don't see it.

There are other ways to contribute to the growth of ATS. Spreading the word of the website for example (leading to the possible addition of members that DO contribute by posting in the forums).

And I seriously doubt forcing people to contribute will do more than guarantee a growing number of meaningless posts that add little or nothing of value to the boards...