Is there going to be a dirge during the surge, or after the purge, or before the next scourge immerges , before upsurge of people submerged ?
I was going to begin this in January but things got in the way, but the purge will begin today. Over the next week or so, as time permits, I'll be deleting forum member accounts that are more than a year old and have never shown any activity. We now have 1,081 members on record, but a lot of people register for an account but never come back. Others lurk for a day or two, then never come back. These accounts will be removed, in alphabetical order. I will only be removing those that are at least a year old because some people like to lurk for a while before joining in, and if I can see that someone has logged into their account, I'll leave them be. I will also be deleting the count of spammers who are not recent. I don't routinely remove spam accounts because it's more effective to ban them; otherwise, they just create another account. In short, I'll be doing pretty much like what I did a year or so ago. I will also be removing those who have been members for at least two months, have not posted, and have not uploaded an avatar. With an avatar, I'll give them a year. If you notice the number going down, that would be the reason.
Completing the A's and the B's, we're down to 1,011. It was a particularly bad day for the Barry's. We had about a dozen of them and I dumped them all.
An Admin's work is never done. I know I've created accounts on trade forums and not used them after I got help with my problem, but I'm not sure I've ever created an account and not used it at least once. I've gone back years and still been able to use my credentials...or at least get them refreshed. Those types of forums often sell ad space, so are more motivated to keep their numbers propped up than they are to keep their databases clean. I recall tying into a free database that was set up for members (usually forum admins) to report a spammer and add their IP address and other data, so that anyone in that database was prevented from creating an account in the first place. Or so I recall. It's been a while. And it was in vBulletin. There are lots of challenges in fighting spammers. Given our demographics, I'm surprised there aren't more of them. Darned idiots need to get a life.
Through the C's and we're down to 980. This is a more severe cull than last year's. The first time through, if they had an avatar, I left them regardless of activity. This time though, if they have never posted and haven't even logged in within the last year, I am removing them. Without an avatar, it's only a couple of months. As a result, several of the accounts that were spared last time around are being removed.