This has happened to me and my co-admins before in the past, but not just based on ProBoards; Yahoo! Groups, LiveJournal communities, or even just through an otherwise constant communication via e-mail:

When an individual (or more, it varies randomly) join your RPG...

But then that's it.

You do not receive anything from them; you do not hear from them in any way; you do not see an activity from them besides maybe a 'forgot password e-mail request'.

Even if you personally e-mail them back; nothing.

How do you tell which registered members actually do have an intention to join your RPG, and which ones are 'fake' accounts? Besides the obvious fact if it looks like a troll, or a poser Elitist. I have dealt with trolls and such in the past easily, but these rare cases are just... well, strange, and perplexing.

Any idea on what to do with these individuals who join, and then within 2 days disappear off the face of the planet?

I've seen scheduled monthly (if your RP is very active) or bimonthy cleanouts work well. For slower ones once a season. Just go through and delete people that never log in or reply and such.

On our forum, we do a biweekly purge. On say, the 12th, we check who's been active in the past 14 days (Invisionfree has a mechanism for this in the Admin CP) and then send out a bulk email which essentially says "Hey, you all haven't been active in the past two weeks, if you don't at least get your butt to the board and post an away message, your account will be deleted on the 15th." Then on the appointed day, we purge the accounts. Our rules say everyone is responsible for at least two posts a week, so we think that purging people who haven't posted in at least two is fair enough.

I had an older board (then the one I currently have) and I would just leave it as is. It’ll look a little bit better for your site in general since people usually think more members = better quality.

I have a really hard time with bots so I usually do a weekly cleanout. Once you get to a higher member level it doesn't look good for you to have a bunch of inactive accounts. Sites with 100+ members are intimidating for new role players and if only 40 of those accounts are active wouldn't it look better if you had tons of posts for 40 members then only a few posts each with 100?

Luckily, we've only been hit 2-3 times by bots (looks around for wood to knock), so our biweekly housekeeping is enough for now. And I agree. Back when we only had 5-6 active members, we kept the inactives, just to pad the list a little. But now that we have 15-20 unique (and mainly active) members, we prune religiously.

I'd say...a good fifty members join and never post on my forum. Sad ;_;.

It happens a lot, in every single forum =o= I suggest a monthly purge, at least of those that haven't got any messages. Ghost members piss me off, for some odd reason.

Whoah, I received a lot of answers; thanks, everyone!

=) I forgot about the bi-monthly purge idea. I've never had an inactive RPG; everyone in each of my RPGs are friends with everyone else, and we're very close; so me and my co-admins never have the need to 'remove' the silent/ghost members, because there never are any.

Save for the silent members who join one of the forum-based RPGs, and never do anything afterwards. =/ I agree, it does get you PO'd.

How long though, should you wait before you define the individual as a ghost member? IE: They could've been busy with school or work, and hadn't had a chance to log in and submit an application or question.

I'm thinking maybe about... a week or so?

So far, I have -one- 'ghost' member, and it's been... er, 4 days so far. It's requested a lost password, and it's actually got an age in it's otherwise empty profile.

If you're going to start this policy, I'd suggest you add it to your rules, post an announcement, and send out a mass mailer. Tell your folks exactly what date you plan to start these cleanouts and when they'll be expecting them to happen from now on. Then make sure that you send out those advance mass mailings (before the purges), giving a distinct time/date when you're going to do it, and specific instructions as to what to do if your members want to avoid being purged. Then just stick to it. It's worked fine for us so far. No one's come back to complain.

It would be a good idea to make your players announce if they go away for a while, so you keep those accounts safe ;)

Good idea!

I completely forgot about the much needed 'away' board.

Thanks for the reminder!

It's annoying when people join and do absolutely nothing...

I have an away board for members to post in if they know they'll be gone for a while. It does get used by quite a few people, but then there are the other people...the ones that join, might make a partial application or attempt a first post and then never return. Then there's the ones that do absolutely nothing...or join just to spam the boards with random advertisements (I so loathe them).

Personally, I try to do a clean-out every month or two...depends on how much time I have on hand because of school. This last one I did was terrible...I don't know how many people joined and did nothing. I sent out messages and e-mails and none of them came back to the boards. It may look good if you have a lot of members on your site, but if you have a lot and very little posting going on it looks very bad, too. Better to clean out the slackers.

I reckon that if you are going to start purging weekly or bi-weekly it is a necessity to have an "away" board, because otherwise it could be just that- they're having computer problems or something similar. I haven't had any ghost members on my forum yet, all of them (all 6! hee hee) have posted since arriving, and except for one that I have to keep reminding to post (since he's a friend of mine) things have been going smoothly on that front.

I'd just put them in an Inactive member group, and keep giving weekly board updates and see if they'll come back. A good month or so, I delete them.

I guess I just thought an away board was standard policy. Our rules expressly state that you must make an away post at least once every two weeks, barring extenuating circumstances. We figure even if you're having massive computer problems you have to be able to make it to a computer at least once every two weeks, right?

To be honest, I don't see why forums have to have an entire board for away posts, instead of just a thread, maybe in the character development/plotting forum. They really never get that many posts, at least, not enough where a single thread gets out of control.

Actually, ours is just a thread in the announcements/faqs/news forum. Works just fine.