Read Carefully: Inactivity

[Raz note: following is a "joke"]

Dear Poster,

PHP has shown it's useful nature, but servers are getting full.
What does this mean?
This means we need to limit the databank. On a forum which is active 24/7 this is impossible so other solutions have to be found.

After long consideration of possible solutions, the decision was to delete INACTIVE users.

What are inactive users?

This are registered posters which:
[list=a]a) haven't made their first post within a week after they signed up
[/list=a]
[list=b]b) haven't made a post in two weeks straight[/list=b]

Sorry for the inconvience;

enjoy your posting

and your point is?

you're active, so you don't have to worry

But if I go on a 2 week holiday then is it just unlucky dude.

the special reason button will be up and running soon
with that button you can give a reason why you will become inactive and deleting will be spared

So, you are driving down the road on your way to the internet cafe and you get run over, you are stuck in hospital unable to move and log on or tell anyone to do so for you. Then you are stuffed.

my net provider mighht piss off and cut me loose... probably not but what if it happends....i could get of for more than 2 weeks.
now..i need a signed paper with u sayin' u won't delete me...

in those two cases, you have bad luck.
Sorry, but a line must be drawn. The databanks are too big.

How much space does 1000 members take up on a server, as opposed to 200,000 posts?

If you made the rules a little more flexible, ie inactivity is over 6 months of not posting (having been active already).

If a new member has a post rate of less than 1/day after say a month then they too could be considered inactive.

I am not necessarily suggesting that the above rules are right, just that if things do need trimming then the options/rules need to be looked at correctly.

the problem is that servers are getting full and we are not on a seperate server. Because a server must have PHP AND MySQL enabled (which alone takes a few megs in size) we also SHARE our servers.

I reckon our board doesn't take that much space but the other forums we share with are much bigger

again, sorry for the inconvinience

So is Raz expected to do the trimming of the site or will someone at PHP do it automatically.

If it is Raz then can the rules for inactivity be adjusted to his liking?

PHP isn't a company, it's the "language" that is used to make and adapt this forum.

The rules can of course change
the idea is to hit INACTIVE posters. Meaning posters with a postcount of 0, this is an agreement made by the other forums on our servers, so we hope to get more room that way before we need to go to more dramatic actions...

I'm not saying it's a bad idea to purge the inactives, just may need the rules defined at little nicer otherwise someone who is off for a month or 2 at the time of the purge.

Also shouldn't this be in the announcements/support section?

it's not a total blocking of IP though
I reckon the problems this will make, but backups of forums are made when upgrading a forum to a newer version.
Current plans are to make a backup of users on a seperate, none server. (Posters with a 0-postcount are not included).

Remember, if you're off for two months and you drop a line explaining you are offline for a long time, you will not be deleted

What happens to inactive posters posts, so they also get removed or do they remain and it is only the user details removed?

inactive posters with 0 posts will get deleted entirely.
Inactive posters with a postcount higher then 0 get their OLD posts deleted (threads older then 4 months). This will save a lot of HD.
If more space is needed after that, a poll will be held in the GDF asking if the "newest" posts of those posters should be deleted too or not. If the result is no, a new solution has to be found.

Umm...yerssot DOES NOT speak for us, neither is he a moderator.

I think he just lost his marbles....I hope you find them soon!

Man what a hoot this thread is, I'm not sure my sides will ever repair themselves after reading this last one and a half pages.

it's open again?
hmmm...
*takes note in big book of mysteries*

phew raz..i thought he got a promotion.
well yerss...sticking to ur ideea...we coul delete the most....consistent ....meber round here.....to loosen the server a little bit. 😆