No this has nothing to do with the 'rules', or the ongoing JD vs SC arguement at the moment. Its got to do with the ammount of members here that may not be in use. What Im talking about his people who have signed up, downloaded a game than left the community for ever.
I dont know if this takes up much space on the server, but there are a hell of a lot of members who are 'inactive'. When trying to mail someone through the automatic mail selection, youll see the vast number of people, and it aint easy findin the one you want. YES I am aware that you can simple select the person through their profile, and you can also make a favourites list, but what about when someone wants to sign up, and they find that someone who isnt even currently using their account has used there desired name?
Just an idea that an 'Automatic Deletion' could take place if a user was inactive for too long. This should only apply to members who havent submitted anything. It might clear up some room on the server, shorten the mail list, and definately allow people to choose a desired name. Like I said, its just an idea, Ive theres some major flaw in my idea feel free to abuse me :]
Editted some spaces into it, so you can read it better ;]
Edited by the Author.
'oh yeah? he's thrown a kettle over a pub, what have you done?'
istvan for governor! Good idea, I just assumed there would have already been something like this coded already since I've never picked a name from that list. Now I know that there isn't, it's too good an idea to let it die!
Personally Ive wondered about the same thing before. Its a good idea indeed.
If you knew, I would have to kill you...
Pete Nattress Cheesy Bits img src/uploads/sccheesegif
Registered 23/09/2002
Points 4811
14th March, 2004 at 06:35:35 -
actually, i imagine that a single user account doesn't take up much space at all (what info has to be stored? name, password, email, registration date, age, and user level) so each account is probably only a few KB. that said, there are an awful lot of them so it probably all adds up.
And just think how many CPU cycles it takes to search through 15000 of them. If we delete loads of inactive users, the website will be faster than a speeding mullet
I actually suggested this to Clubsoft a few months ago, and he said that it wouldnt really be plausible, as some people might leave the community for a period of time, for, say, exams or something. I think it was Clubsoft anyway, might have been Mr Caster.
It is common practice for webmasters to clean out the user databases every few months. If someone hasn't come back in, say, 6 months, then delete them. Place that as a warning on the register screen. If you delete 500 users who haven't been active in the past 6 months, maybe 10 of them will come back eventually, and it shouldn't be too much trouble for them to reregister. In the meanwhile, you save a LOT of server processing and make it much more convenient to private message people. Presumably on every single page here on the Daily Click, you have to do several lookups for the current user or for a different user. So on every page, several times you are searching through the thousands of users... well, if you've coded it well, you probably won't be doing that, but it still optimises things to have fewer users in the database
Circy, It could work like this (as Istvan suggested really):
If a user has submitted nothing to the site, and their account has not been activated for some time (a few months maybe), then they should be deleted. If a user who has not submitted anything comes back after their account has been deleted, they just have to sign up a new one.
Even if sombody has submited somthing, I think there account should be deleted and the item they submited should be deleted aswell (save articles). I know there would be alot of stuff deleted off the site, but unless the game is really good, I rather play a game that sombody made in the community.
We are the music makers, we are the dreamers of dreams...
I agree with istvan, but if you have to leave for a few months for some reason, and come back to find all yours games/articles gone, it would suck. So aslong as nothing has been submitted, go right ahead.
keeping a time count on each user and deleting those who are still at a newbie rating may be a good idea, since a newbie hasnt done much there wont be much for them too miss when/if they return. and the majority of the users that never return will be at a newbie rating.
those with higher than newbie ratings should in theory visit more often and wouldnt ever reach the required time for deletion.
Hah I think I may have found a flaw in my original plan. Programming an inbuilt timer for EVERY user could possibly take up more space than an inactive user. However there would be less timers if it only recorded 'newbie' status, but seeing most users are noobs this mighten make much difference.
Someone mentioned that the admins could do a monthly check of any users you havent been active for a set ammount of time. Although this would be done manually, it could theoretically save space on the server. I dont have any knowledge of how websites run or are programmed, but its good to hear a lot of agreement.
So I think its time for us to all hold hands, and make love not war...or we could just stick to the idea. Either way would end up pretty sticky...
'oh yeah? he's thrown a kettle over a pub, what have you done?'
I think people should be deleted after a period of time has passed. The limit could be something like (6+(DC points)*2) months. So, someone with 0 DC points can be deleted after 6 months, but the guys with 20 DC points stay for around 26 months without doing anything. I mean there are guys around here who just hang around the forum and post stuff without a single DC point.
Disclaimer: Any sarcasm in my posts will not be mentioned as that would ruin the purpose. It is assumed that the reader is intelligent enough to tell the difference between what is sarcasm and what is not.
This was something I had considered some time ago (back when the database was only 20mb ) to free up space and make accessing the database faster. Though as was mentioned I would probably get complaints if someone happened to be deleted that was planning to "come back" to their account O__o So I settled with writing three other SQL scripts that delete idle posts in the forums (that is, replys to topics that have been deleted), idle comments (comments on news, articles, downloads, etc, where the parent has been deleted), and idle thumbs, which deletes votes for games that have been removed.
I still go through and remove old stuff every now and then... i.e. during last years cleanout there were several thousand DC messages which were years old and hadn't been deleted by the recipient. Old forum posts also get deleted, but that's about it.
I suppose I could make a script to remove the users that havent been active in say, 12 months, but I dont know if that would greatly improve performance moreso than the other scripts. Though if people specifically want a name that has been registered and out-of-use for some time I might just do that.
Mike
"Now I guess we're... 'Path-E-Tech Management'" -Dilbert
12 months is a very, very, very long time. It's sad seeing people who go about referring to a year so lightly. I've only lived for about 17 and a half years or so.
Disclaimer: Any sarcasm in my posts will not be mentioned as that would ruin the purpose. It is assumed that the reader is intelligent enough to tell the difference between what is sarcasm and what is not.
Yeah, I agree 12 months is too long. I cant see why someone would be angry if they were deleted from a site they hadnt contributed to atall, and who havent been active for say 6 months.
'oh yeah? he's thrown a kettle over a pub, what have you done?'
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Mike 