UBB.threads PHP Forum Software Community Forums Resources and Customizing Admin Zone What's your take on non-posting members?

I just did a quick count on UBBC and out of 3565 registered members, 1990 (56%) have never posted.

So what do you do on your forums? Do you just leave them to build up so the numbers look good or do you routinely clear out dead wood?

i clear them out, but i also update the public readout of how many members I have to keep things looking "proper". Let me tell you, people got uppidy when you migrated to threads from classic and saw that we where at 2k users when we where over 10k before the import (I do monthly pruning of users who haven't posted a year before today's date)

A non posting member is as much a member as a posting one in my vision.

Fact is that lots of people like reading along, but have no desire to post about the subject.

Clearing out user accounts only happens at our board when asked for by someone who wants their displayname. And then only then he didn't visit the for atleast 2 years and he made no posts whatsoever.

I'm inclined to agree with blaaskaak.
I get members showing up after 2-4 years and then getting well stuck in. (Usually they email and ask for their password )

As above
Only if resources are maxed then reduce slowly lol

I also keep them, however...

...I would like to have a system whereby non-posting members are emailed every 3-6 months encouraging them back to post.

...also I would like to see a box at the top of screen to people who are logged in and have not posted encoraging them to post and join in the community.

I got a fairly caustic email yesterday after a member received a birthday greeting.

Something along the lines of....

Yeah Great - Just what I need!
To be reminded that my old decaying body is one step nearer the grave.
THANKS FOR NOTHING!!!!

Did you know its your birthday in 6 months lol

couldn't resist sorry.

A site I signed up for but stopped going to for one reason or another still sends me every couple months a 'newsletter' which is mostly a listing of the recent topics and similar stuff. It's not a bad idea, since the subject matter is why I signed up. I will occasionally read it and click on a topic that sounds interesting.

People that resent being told 'happy birthday' need to be beaten until morale improves

A non-posting member who hasn't visited my site in over a year (generally the day after he registered) is of no use to me; they're just wasted space. They've never posted, so they're just whording a username/pdn which again is of no use to me.

i ONLY search members with 0 posts (who haven't had any activity in the last 1-2 years), all they had to do was make a welcome post, or ask one question and they'd be well exempt from my policies ...


you too? I always want to stop by and say hi when i receive messages from vPraise lol

agreed... i appreciate it when people tell me happy birthday, as they're generally the onlyones (short of like 4 people IRL) that do it lol

Well you could search for (not sure of the exact field name) LastOn and then if that is over a year old maybe prune them out.

I search:
"registered" before one year from today.
"last on" one year from today.
"Member currently has posts?" no

Thus, they registered before one year today, they haven't been on in the last year, they don't have any posts.

Okay sounds good to me. Didn't see where you mentioned the LAST ON in the previous posts.

holy crap! Giz-UNiT and i agree on something again!!

what is this world coming to!??

At least I don't have computer parts to a powerhouse on my floor for a period longer than 2 weeks ...

OOoooofff! I just ran that and it's nearly a third of my board!
That came as a bit of a surprise!

Still, those files aren't taking up much space are they?
...and they make the numbers look respectable

I do the same search but for 6 months rather than a year.

I miss the option that was available in UBB.classic were you could select by "x number of days" so rather than inputting a date you could just type in 365 or 183 for 6 months.

Do you then delete the members? Or keep them?
If members are deleted, do the content island Forum Stats reflect this?

Well all previous posts where they posted have an invalid user name now. I think the naming or method has been changed for 7.2.2 but in previous versions was something like DO NOT DELETE or was it some other name, I forget.

yes in the same way as if you delete a post the number of posts goes down by one

I think the figures (especially the number of topics / posts ) should reflect the total number of topics/posts that have been made on the forum and NOT the current number of topics/posts currently in the database (which IMHO is an irrelevant figure!

(sorry this is a bugbear of mine)

35 members take up 42kb of space; during a purge I get rid of several hundred users who just drive-by register (or driv by register...)

You can update the public readout to reflect your pre-purge member total .

NT, if you simply delete only those with 0 posts, there are no posts which don't belong to a user ...

Yes, but I was thinking of users that are like 3 years old or so and have say 5 posts - many Admins would probably remove them as well. But I get your point.

'eh I let them survive, they're more useful than those who've never posted ...

How d'ya do that then?

I don't like cheating with numbers that can be verified so easy.

I posted it at ubbdev (clicky, but then you end up with some people stating that:


Eventhough my totals reflected the "real member registration total" vs "total members in database total". You know, because a 10 year old community looks like crap with a small amount of posters...

it can look like crap with a large amount of posters too