Ye' old general discussion board. Basically, for everything that isn't covered elsewhere. Come here to shoot the breeze, shoot your mouth off, or whatever suits your fancy. This forum is not for asking programming related questions.
That's more than likely the normal way of things on the net. People sign up, but don't do anything. Those numbers honestly look right. A small number are going to be very active. But as the total number grows, that small percentage equals larger numbers.
I don't think it's too good an idea to remove the accounts that don't post much, after all there are some people like me who just search for solutions rather than asking what has already been answered, and one main reason I register is so I can see all the new posts to read everyday. And I am sure there are a lot of people like me out there
Last edited by krash_control on Tue Jan 13, 2004 7:22 am, edited 1 time in total.
There are other forums where I lurk (mozillazine.org for example) and have never posted. I'd be a bit annoyed if they trashed my user account because I do read a lot of the stuff on there and like to know which posts I haven't read yet. I did stop lurking on a forum that started insisting that you logged in each time you visited as they decided auto-login was a security risk - pain in the rear.
teksys wrote:Why don't u guys just prune all those inactive users?
Because they take up a trivial amount of space, add considerable functionality to the people with those accounts, and discourage regular and repetitive visits?
I think the better question is why prune the inactive users?
If I recall correctly this site is being hosted by sponsors of devnetwork.net, which means the question of resources does not arise, otherwise the sponsors would be making noise and we'd all be feeling it.
Personally, since the forum was moved to the sponsor's server, I have never had any problems, be they bandwidth related or whatsoever.
As I understand it, this forum was created in the spirit of Open Source. This forum is contributing to people's understanding of PHP and has become a PHP resource as well - open to all.
The only thing I think reasonable is to write an auto-generated email to users whose account has been inactive (i.e. no visits, no posts, no nothing) for a specific amount of time and ask them to renew their membership, else that user-profile will be deleted.
So, what reason other than a misunderstood notion of sharing is left to prune users who don't post? I can't see any and I don't like the idea. If some people don't like to contribute, so be it - they have their reasons for coming here and I presume it has to do with wanting to learn about PHP.
Becoming elitist because you can is contrary to everything I've experienced on this forum. Those who do not post today are the posters of tomorrow.
I never really pay attention to forum problems like this so I don't really have an opinion on the topic. I'm here to help who I can, when I can; regardless of who posted what, or why someone didnt post, or why newbies don't visit.