One of my biggest irritations beside cbox spammers, would be those who join then never come back. Yeh, then you have more members, or at least your stats say you do, but the activity of your forum doesnt increase. If you join a forum, you should commit to it. Yeh, I admit I've joined a few in the past, then never came back, but I was active for a bit before I lost intrest. I'm talking about people that come on and join, then never make a character or return. They should read the rules and guidelines fo the forum before joining, that way they dont join then find something they dont like and leave.

How many of you out there have a set period before deleting accounts? Mine is if you dont sign on for eight months they get deleted (or so I tell myself).

We have it in the rules - if you join, you must enter a character application before two weeks after you joined... and if you're then accepted and playing, your account will be deleted within a month if you don't post at all or have given any notice. Of course we'll try to contact the members before deleting them, but if we can't get in touch with them and they never respond to pm's or e-mails, we assume they don't want to come back.

We've had a few who joined but never got any further than that... right now there's even one, who joined and made a really great application which was accepted - but haven't seen her online since! I've sent the e-mail to her too - and after that we're also running an activitiy check which she hasn't responded to.

I don't think I've joined a board then never done anything about it. I joined one a few weeks ago, then sort of forgot about it a short while (a week, maybe more) but then I came back and sadly found the place half-abandoned. The idea of the board was great, which was why I joined, so now I finally entered an application, I'm accepted and I'll try to kick life back into it, even if I'm not admin or mod ;) I just hate to see a great idea die... :)

I totally agree SilverHawke. 80% of users registered on my forum visited once. Yes they visited once, to register, and then left. Never to be seen again. I hadn't originally thought of deleting accounts after a certain time but I definitely think now that is something I'll have to look into. I would think 8 months is a very fair time period.

it says one week in my rules but i usually give about two or maybe even four [ i do an activity check once a month]

it'd be one thing if you join on a whim and realize you didn't want to and then PMd an admin about it so that we knew you weren't coming back but to join and never return? then, of course, there are those that will post an application and then never come back to either fix what's wrong to get accepted or don't post after they've been accepted.

that's almost as bad as joining, losing interest, leaving without warning, getting deleted, and then returning months later only to do it again. currently, i'm dealing with that on another site of mine. it's really annoying but i try to give them a chance because i don't like turning members away. still, those kinds of things drive me NUTS!

We prune all inactive accounts at once - including members who just dropped off the face of the earth. Any account that hasn't been active in the past three weeks is sent an email, letting them know they haven't posted in three weeks, and if they would like to continue playing on the boards, to post an absence or resume being active within the next seven days.

If the seven days runs out... buh bye. Though we're not against people coming back and creating their characters again, I think a month is pretty fair, considering we've got a fast paced game.

yeah, i'm not against members coming back after they've been deleted for being inactive but this particular account is now on turn number three. she's been on the board TWICE before and then just left without warning and doesn't say anything about it when she comes back.

of course, this time, we're putting her on probation before we let her get involved in any major plotting or anything, just to make sure shes going to stick around, this time.

i think giving three chances is more than enough but maybe i'm just too harsh -sighs-

*is totally guilty of this*

Yeah, but I try to PM the admin if I remember. (tongue) Sometimes the admin doesn't do anything at all and just leaves my stuff hanging around. Umm okay. What's the point of that?

I register on many sites and never appear again. It's unfortunate but sometimes I like the site (in theory) but then when I look at it I notice it's not really the place I would play (a community I don't think I could fit into). I've tried to stop registering so quickly now.

I would be exactly like RENTal lot except that I have learned to hold off on registering until I've thoroughly checked a site out. Sometimes when I'm overly eager I even distract myself by going to other places or even getting off the computer to give myself time to think about it.

EIGHT MONTHS!? Wow. I give any member two weeks, then email them, then two weeks, then delete them. I usually do it at random intervals so that some people can have their account up for months and others only just hit the two weeks.