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josh, i know how you dont like people joining the forums to take the quiz, making 10 rather worthless posts and leaving. now theres no real way to control that in itself, but would there be a way to just take off someones account from the forums after they havent posted for like i guess a month after making 10 or so posts? i doubt theres actually a way for that to automatically happen, and everyone probably has better things to do than sit around doing that by hand so maybe it wouldnt work out at all. i have been on the forums for a little over 4 months now , and theres some 300 odd people here, but i can only remember being in contact with MAYBE 50. well anyways i thought up this idea last night, though maybe im not the first and i guess it would just free up a little space, thats all.

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You watch the world exploding every single night
Dancing in the sun, a newborn in the light
Say goodbye to gravity and say goodbye to death
Hello to eternity and live for every breath

Your time will come...

Well you never know when people come back. I like the idea but the dealine should be extended to 3 months. But yeah those silly accounts have to go.

You aren't the first to come up with this by far. We have done a cleaning before, and we probably will again; but if you look at the joining dates, people join fairly quickly and sometimes don't post, so we can easily get 50 new members in a short period of time.

For example, 26 members joined In Feb. 18 have yet to post once.



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I had an old signature. Now I've changed it.

There currently is no automated feature of these forums that will allow us to prune users that way, which is why it hasn't often been done. It's on my long-term list to write this feature into these forums the way it was at the old forums. Who exactly we'll prune remains to be seen.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

I'm all for deleting accounts with no posts, and accounts which have completely obviously just been made to access the quiz, but as long as someone has made a valid contribution before, even if it's justone post, I find it disrespectful and irritating to remove them.  Heck, my account would fall off.  I don't contribute here that much, some people don't, not everyone is much of a talker, but such people are always welcome when they do have something to say.

We are considering alternatives regarding the quiz, though.  Feel free to post any suggestions here.  It seems like the flow of members joining to take the quiz has been reduced recently, though.  Maybe it's just me.

yeah i see where everyones ideas are coming from, i know a lot of people arent big talkers, even some of the people who run the site itself, and it would be kinda sucky to have your account erased when you just dont say much, but thanks for entertaining the thought though. i figured i coudnt have possibly been the first person out of all the people here to have had that idea, and i never realized cleanings too place. alrighty then.

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You watch the world exploding every single night
Dancing in the sun, a newborn in the light
Say goodbye to gravity and say goodbye to death
Hello to eternity and live for every breath

Your time will come...

Mate It was a good suggestion and it did answer my question as to why there isn't alot of cleaning up. Really I rarely pondered on it.

i have an idea.

how about not tell people about the quizes? you know
until they actually join, and then when they join, itll most likely be people who will stay, you can tell them about the quizes.
just a thought.

think about it.

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Why do kamakazi pilots wear helmets?

That's an interesting idea in theory. But how to implement it? We can hardly monitor each person, watch for them to make a certain amount of posts, then mention it to them. Also, what would stop them from walking into chat and hearing others discussing it?

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I had an old signature. Now I've changed it.

I think what he's suggesting is that when they either sign up or send back the email that allows them to post at the forums, they get notified that after ten posts they'll be eligible to take the CoN quizzes.  I think that'd be a pretty good idea and would be pretty easy to implement.

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Hey, put the cellphone down for a while
In the night there is something wild
Can you hear it breathing?
And hey, put the laptop down for a while
In the night there is something wild
I feel it, it's leaving me

As far as clean-up goes, institute some policy that involves somwhere around 3 warning e-mails before deleting. Like 3 months after no posts, send the first, and the second a month later and the third a month after that, along with a "WARNED" status, giving a six-month period of inactivity, with three months of warnings.

Plus some of these people may not be able to get theirs to work correctly, like I originally did. (I had to e-mail two staff members about the problem, then one put mine in manually)

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"I had to write four novels before they let me write comic books."
-Brad Meltzer

A Warned status at these forums generally means that they've broken some sort of rule, and not posting doesn't violate any of the rules.  It would be unfair to give them a Warning status because that would most likely dissuade them from posting at all if they hadn't done it before.

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Hey, put the cellphone down for a while
In the night there is something wild
Can you hear it breathing?
And hey, put the laptop down for a while
In the night there is something wild
I feel it, it's leaving me

Actually, I intended to edit that a bit anyways, so I will further explain:
By "WARNED" I meant more of a new kind of WARNED, like "LAPSING" or "DELAYING" or some synonym.
Also, when I said inactivity, it can either mean no posts or no log-ins.

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"I had to write four novels before they let me write comic books."
-Brad Meltzer

A few possible problems spring to mind.
what if someones computer is down for any time-limit to post?
or they cannot open their e-mail acoount due to some problem.
or if they suffer some financial problems and are forced to cancel their internet connection.
or some other doomsday scenarios, like viruses(computer), illness (the other kind of virus eg- ebola), etc...

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"Only the dead have seen the end of their quotes being misattributed to Plato."
-George Santayana

"The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here..."
-Abraham Lincoln, prior to the discovery of Irony.

Let's make sure a couple of things are clear.

Noone EVER has their account deleted, except if:
- They have a post count of 0, after a long period of being registered
- They've been banned before and we want to free the username for new visitors
- We feel they've obviously come here just to place down their ten posts and take the quiz.  We can't ever be sure, but this is usually characterised by exactly ten posts being made within a short time of registration or in similar cases.  It's usually pretty obvious, and if it's not, then clearly there isn't a problem.

For the record, there has been some discussion of solutions to these problems and changes to the situation.  We'll let you know if  things change.

Quote (Dark Paladin @ 24 Mar 2003, 14:09)

Actually, I intended to edit that a bit anyways, so I will further explain: By "WARNED" I meant more of a new kind of WARNED, like "LAPSING" or "DELAYING" or some synonym. Also, when I said inactivity, it can either mean no posts or no log-ins.

Do you mean over by the title?  It's an idea, but I don't see the point of putting someone in the spotlight just because they didn't post.  Even though we give people the opportunity to customize their accounts, I think anything that makes people different that's out of their own control might drive them out, and to see a big "INACTIVE" next to their name upon their first post would drive them away further.  We could try to incorporate a system where it goes away upon their first post, but then it really wouldn't have a point, and it would be really tough to hack (just ask Tiddles).

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Hey, put the cellphone down for a while
In the night there is something wild
Can you hear it breathing?
And hey, put the laptop down for a while
In the night there is something wild
I feel it, it's leaving me

Neal
Of Course I intended it to go away immediately after the first post during inactivity period, so the whole spotlight thing wouldn't be an issue.

Del S
How many "Doomsday" scenarios last over six months that don't make a person stop worring about a video game forum?

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"I had to write four novels before they let me write comic books."
-Brad Meltzer

Let me help. We will not implement your suggestion of an inactivity indicator, DP. Let it go.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

Quote (Del S @ 25 Mar 2003, 11:30)

A few possible problems spring to mind. what if someones computer is down for any time-limit to post? or they cannot open their e-mail acoount due to some problem. or if they suffer some financial problems and are forced to cancel their internet connection. or some other doomsday scenarios, like viruses(computer), illness (the other kind of virus eg- ebola), etc...

well then that person can just use a school computer or use a computer from a friend's house.

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Why do kamakazi pilots wear helmets?