Implemented Pruning users with 0 posts

[Floren]

Another important administration related feature that is missing in XenForo, but present into vBulletin.
I need the ability to find several users who has been inactive for X days and delete them. This can be done easy by modifying the existing search functionality in ACP.

Also, we need some sort of option that allows us to delete with one action the results obtained into search query, like vBulletin does. On my small forums, I get a ton of spammers who create weird accounts like fGsd67Wq with emailfGsd67Wq+spw3@gmail.com and never post because they don't want to attract attention in the beginning. If this happens on a small forum, how do you deal with this issue on a large community?

The main features that are missing on the current user search are filtering the results with less than X results and an action to delete at once the search query results. I just cannot click on the red X for 100 users (yes, I got 100 new spam accounts recently).

Being able to search on IP and last visit date as criteria for pruning is most useful as well.

+1

 

[reginasunrae]

Okay, then! I took the demo for a test drive yesterday and I have to say that from the front end, this has to be one of the most awesome pieces of forum software I've ever seen. Then I went to the admin panel to see options. I created a few users so I could take a look at what the user list looks like. I about fell out of my chair when I saw absolutely no easy options for sorting and deleting member accounts. I did finally find where an account can be deleted but it involves clicking into every single edit user panel to do it.

I don't ever use the auto-prune feature that my current forum has because I don't want every zero-post account deleted. I have several members who just log in and read, usually on a daily basis, and I consider them valuable members of my community. The type of accounts I do delete are the ones that registered, stayed on the forum for maybe five minutes and never came back. There's no point in those accounts wasting resources and they do waste resources. If at some point they did want to return and re-register and become active members they're free to do so, but in the meantime there's not much point in having an account on a forum to which they'll probably never return.

In a nutshell, I was ready to buy a license for Xenforo until I discovered the lack of any easy method for managing the user base.

Another important administration related feature that is missing in XenForo, but present into vBulletin.

Not just vBulletin. Xenforo is the first I've seen that doesn't have something. I currently use MyBB and it has absolutely amazing sifting and sorting capabilities. SMF also has a nice sort feature. And those are just two of the many I've seen.

Also, we need some sort of option that allows us to delete with one action the results obtained into search query, like vBulletin does. On my small forums, I get a ton of spammers who create weird accounts like fGsd67Wq with emailfGsd67Wq+spw3@gmail.com and never post because they don't want to attract attention in the beginning. If this happens on a small forum, how do you deal with this issue on a large community?

The main features that are missing on the current user search are filtering the results with less than X results and an action to delete at once the search query results. I just cannot click on the red X for 100 users (yes, I got 100 new spam accounts recently).

Are you using Stop Forum Spam's database? There are mods for vBulletin and Xenforo that will prevent anyone with their info in that database from registering on your forum. Long story short between SFS, a registration question, a member list not viewable to guests and 0-post members spam on my forum is almost non-existent.

 

[Floren]

I'm aware of StopForumSpam, but the purpose of this thread is to have the missing options available into a future release.

 

[Chimpie]

So the scenario as I have read it (combining multiple posts) is that a guest has registered, has become a member and after two weeks still hasn't posted. The admin now wants to delete the user.

...If they get deleted and at some point come back - surely they can just register again?

Deleting the account may create a negative experience for that user and prevent them from ever registering again. I, personally, have registered with forums just to subscribe to threads that interested me, waiting weeks before ever posting. If my account was deleted I wouldn't receive the thread updates anymore and I would probably forget all about that forum and never engage.

I like mjp's suggestion of not allowing member's with zero posts to edit their profiles.

Are you still running the risk of spammers coming back and posting? Sure, but I think it's easier to take care of a random spam post than it is to purge users every couple of weeks.

 

[Floris]

How is preventing them from updating their profile any less negative of an experience than deleting their account?
If finding out your account got deleted is a negative experience, finding out you have one but it's in lock down .. is for me maybe also enough reason to discontinue participating on the site.

 

[Chimpie]

How is preventing them from updating their profile any less negative of an experience than deleting their account?

I think having your account deleted is a whole lot worse than having to wait till one or a couple of posts before you can update a couple of profile fields.

If finding out your account got deleted is a negative experience, finding out you have one but it's in lock down .. is for me maybe also enough reason to discontinue participating on the site.

Not in my eyes, but I appreciate your viewpoint.

 

[Blue]

I agree with Floris, if you want them to come back they should be allowed to edit their profiles upon registration. What may be a better solution would be the ability to limit public profile visibility until certain conditions where met like number of posts, etc.

 

[Floris]

I really am curious what the "actual" average statistics are from say, 10,000 forums, who prune 0 users, but then have users come back and don't register, and come back and register again.
It's in my opinion if they have registered but never participated, that out of say a sh* load of users, only perhaps one or two come back and go 'ah man, didn't i have an account here?' ... (13 months later ...)

If they have registered but didn't participate within a year, why would they do a year later?
If they wanted to see if the forum would go somewhere, why not just bookmark it and come back a year later, it makes no sense to register and leave, and get upset loads of months later to find out your inactive account was pruned. Especially if the ToS mentions that inactive accounts might be pruned over time.

I think the stats are very very low, and not worth the compromise. Be active, avoid pruning, quite simple.

But, everybody runs their site different, with good reason as well.

 

[reginasunrae]

I haven't been able to get back to this until now but did want to follow up to see if there were any new posts. I see a few and I know I can add a bit of clarification at least to this:

Deleting the account may create a negative experience for that user and prevent them from ever registering again. I, personally, have registered with forums just to subscribe to threads that interested me, waiting weeks before ever posting. If my account was deleted I wouldn't receive the thread updates anymore and I would probably forget all about that forum and never engage.

Shoot no, I'm not talking about the people who register and never post on the forum. On my forum lurkers are ever bit as welcome as regular posters. My forum is basically content driven more than it's activity driven which means that the majority of the active user base visits, gets what they're after then leaves. Some of them sign in daily just to be able to read what's new on the forum or to see what's newly available for download. They're extremely valuable to my site because without them there'd be no need for a website like mine.

What I'm talking about when it comes to deleting member accounts are those created then the user stays on the site for maybe five minutes then leaves never to return, ever. When I was first handed this website I started going through the member base. The former owner had pruned dozens of users with low post count who hadn't been back in over a year but he had left intact every zero-post account. At that point there were a couple of thousand registered accounts. I started pruning zero-post accounts that had lain dormant starting with over a year old down to six months. That cut the registered number in half. Then I started watching the accounts left. If they hadn't returned within a week they weren't coming back but to give some leeway I went ahead and only deleted them after a month of registering with NO RETURN to the forum.

Members of my forum are welcome whether they have 0 posts or a thousand, but if they just drove by one day, registered for the heck of it and never returned, then they're not really members and I don't see any point in wasting space and time on maintaining hundreds or thousands of inactive accounts.

If it's a lurker account that suddenly goes inactive then that's another story. I don't delete those accounts unless the person doesn't show back up for absolutely months on end.

Especially if the ToS mentions that inactive accounts might be pruned over time.

Yeah, and the information about pruning accounts is in my ToS, in a message to guests on the portal page, AND posted in the forum.

 

[craigiri]

I posted this suggestion elsewhere - my 8 year old behind the times forum has the ability to prune users - something I use regularly. I am currently using the "one year with no posts ever" standard, and have never gotten a single complaint. I really doubt anyone cares about the 30 seconds they took for registration.....one year later. But to each his own.
This will happen someday (soon) I assume. It must be pretty high up on the core list.

Our forums are 100% Spam free with 1 million plus posts. But that takes member management. I also currently use activation by me..that is, I have to approve account and before they even get that far, they have to answer an "American" question such as the first name of the founder of apple or stuff like that.
My manual activation is the last step - and I still delete some spammers that way based on IP location, funny looking email addresses and other "fuzzy logic". Examples include plus signs in gmail addresses...always a sign of bad things.

Amazingly enough - even though I delete dozens of new registrants each week, I still have never gotten a complaint! That can only mean one thing - I'm not deleting enough of them!

 

[Adam Howard]

We need this feature. Not just to delete people with ZERO post, but also delete old accounts that are no longer in use... ie.... X user was last seen online on Z time.

 

[yavuz]

We need this feature. Not just to delete people with ZERO post, but also delete old accounts that are no longer in use... ie.... X user was last seen online on Z time.

http://xenforo.com/community/threads/delete-0-posters.14360/

Use the floris version of this addon, does the exact thing.

 

[Adam Howard]

http://xenforo.com/community/threads/delete-0-posters.14360/

Use the floris version of this addon, does the exact thing.

As I understand it from the post in that thread.... It doesn't seem to work on the current version. Or have you been using it?

(Kind of bad when things are locked and I can't follow up. And this should be in the core)

 

[yavuz]

As I understand it from the post in that thread.... It doesn't seem to work on the current version. Or have you been using it?

(Kind of bad when things are locked and I can't follow up. And this should be in the core)

I can confirm that it does having it installed myself. I deleted about 3k users both with the activity and post criteria.

 

[DRE]

As I understand it from the post in that thread.... It doesn't seem to work on the current version. Or have you been using it?

(Kind of bad when things are locked and I can't follow up. And this should be in the core)

Doesn't work for me.

 

[Adam Howard]

Doesn't work for me.

You may need to change the con job time. I noticed mine was setup to run once a year

I changed mine to run once a day.

Then within the settings (not the con job, but the actual mod setting) I told it to remove 100 people, who have not been active for the past 365 days & who have zero post.

 

[DRE]

You may need to change the con job time. I noticed mine was setup to run once a year

I changed mine to run once a day.

Then within the settings (not the con job, but the actual mod setting) I told it to remove 100 people, who have not been active for the past 365 days & who have zero post.

I took a look at it and it didn't work for me because I had it set on the wrong option in admincp.

 

[C.L.]

I disagree to the idea of pruning 0 post accounts. I agree with reginasunrae that some people just read the forums. I also don't like the idea of having to get approved for registration.