Reducing the Memberlist...

The Ginger Loon · Post by **The Ginger Loon** » 06 September 06 11:45 am

I've noticed that there are quite a lot of inactive members to this site. People that have registered and never posted and never returned since registering.

Would it be possible to have a feature that automatically culls the "member" if a person registers, doesn't post and doesn't return in 100 days from registration? If you think 100 days to too generous make it 60 days. If they don't return and post in the first 2 or 3 months they are unlikely to return in the future IMO.

Maybe you can send them an automated email message asking them to verify their membership and give them a few days grace to do so before chopping them.

While over 3500 members in the list looks impressive it's not indicative of the size of the sport or of the active participation in the forums.

Regards
L()()N

ideology · Post by **ideology** » 06 September 06 12:40 pm

we've resisted before but it's got out of hand lately
we think the criteria you set is reasonable

any other opinions from anyone?

Postman Pat · Post by **Postman Pat** » 06 September 06 1:46 pm

It might be an idea to allow restricted access to new members until they prove them selves to be legit

The Garner Family · Post by **The Garner Family** » 06 September 06 2:07 pm

I think that there might be a number of people who register legitimately & read the posts but never actually post themselves. It would be a shame to see these people excluded... i.e. I don't think whether or not you post is relevant, but whether or not you return & log on should be relevant.

Horus · Post by **Horus** » 06 September 06 2:27 pm

Is it possible for an admin to do a query on the forum database to see how many active members there are? For example logged on in say the last 90 days - this would include the members that just read and don't post.

The Ginger Loon · Post by **The Ginger Loon** » 06 September 06 6:42 pm

The Garner Family wrote:I think that there might be a number of people who register legitimately & read the posts but never actually post themselves. It would be a shame to see these people excluded... i.e. I don't think whether or not you post is relevant, but whether or not you return & log on should be relevant.

riblit · Post by **riblit** » 06 September 06 7:12 pm

Postman Pat wrote:It might be an idea to allow restricted access to new members until they prove them selves to be legit

All new registrations are inactive until they are manually checked and activated. Any one with a website listed gets a visit to the website to see whats there. If its is not a geocaching or hobby (bushwalking etc.)related site, the account does not get activated.

If the email address bounces the account remains inactive.

From 12 July to 6 Sept there have been 103 accounts that have suffered this fate and 426 legitimate new members

riblit · Post by **riblit** » 06 September 06 7:13 pm

The automatic culling loon mentioned could be done but would be better added to the updated bbs software.

dajjct · Post by **dajjct** » 07 September 06 10:30 pm

Thought I better post so I don't get removed. I tend to do more lurking than posting, as quite often, due to a fairly busy life, taxiing 4 kids around the metro area, by the time I get to read the threads that I am interested in, have had all the comments made that I would have made. Also being a quiet person by nature, and of few words, it takes me too long to reply.<p>

Would prefer if posting wasn't required for maintaining membership.<p>

David.

riblit · Post by **riblit** » 07 September 06 10:35 pm

dajjct wrote:
Would prefer if posting wasn't required for maintaining membership.<p>

David.

its ok - you are past the low cutoff limit..

The Ginger Loon · Post by **The Ginger Loon** » 07 September 06 10:38 pm

Note to all lurkers

Please don't feel you need to post to keep on the inside. The criteria I am proposing will only omit people who don't return, not those who don't post.

This site is still and I hope will always be a valuable resource to the general caching community and even if you don't post you can get a lot of good information here.

suedenharr · Post by **suedenharr** » 08 September 06 6:20 pm

Why is it important to cull/chop people? You are not promoting the forum by penalising people who do not have a lot to say. Many will look at this topic and refrain from making any comments anywhere on the forum. Geocaching does not revolve around the forum or am I missing something.

To be a devils advocate, those Ã‚â€œLurkersÃ‚â€

Papa Bear_Left · Post by **Papa Bear_Left** » 08 September 06 6:35 pm

Nobody's making any negative comments about regular readers who don't post; in fact they're all bending over backwards to point out that not posting is not, by itself, anything that needs attention at all.

What the memberlist is bloated with is members who've signed up, looked around (maybe!) and then never returned. Some of these will be spam accounts, most of them will be, I suspect, the faintly curious who looked around and then wandered off again, never to return.

There's not a huge problem with spurious accounts, but they can tie up usernames (I ended up as "theUMP" on the other site, since "Ump" had signed up to log one cache ages ago and never returned, as an example) and also make it hard to find a member in the over-long userlist.

I think that anyone who's visited less than 3 times and not logged on within the last 120 days probably won't be back. Or at least won't be offended if their login no longer works after all that time!

(BTW, I think the term "lurker" for someone who reads a forum without posting is now wide-spread enough in a non-perjorative way to not cause offence.)

Post by **caughtatwork** » 08 September 06 6:56 pm

From an administration point of view culling the memberlist is going to cause some longer term issues.

Let's say cacher X signs up at GC.com.
They find one cache.
They signup here.
They never find another cache and never log onto the forums again.
The memberlist is inflated by 1 person who has lost interest in the game (assume this).

However, the cacher called X still owns the find on that cache.
If we cull X from the list and someone else signs up with X, we now have a non-registered cacher who has found a cache and the new cacher who appears to have found a cache that they didn't actually find.

This is actually a problem right now.

Someone joins us here first.
They create a cachername called Y.
There is already a cacher called Y on GC.com
So cacher Y appears to have found a hundred caches when in fact they have found non.
Cacher Y gets all confused.

It's an imperfect system having two sites where you can comandeer the name of a different cacher.

It's not a one way street, either.

A cacher signs up here, finds 10 GCA caches under that name (this time call them A).
A is registered to a different person over there.

A from there can no longer come here as there is an A here.
A from here can no longer go there as there is an A there.

Culling the memberlist does not solve these types of problems and in fact could contribute further to the confusion.

Lets say B registered here and there.
B finds some caches, but never logs on here again.
B is culled.
Someone new comes in, thinks B is a cool name and registers.
We get back into the problem of there already being logs against B taht don't belong to the new name.

There is a case for leaving the memberlist alone.

It depends on whether we are culling the memberlist because it looks like there are 3,000 cachers in Australia and there aren't or whether we are culling it for different reasons.

If you want an accurate count of active members then the memberlist is not accurate and I will look into the production of a new statistic that will provide this information based on the stats in the logs.

EcoTeam · Post by **EcoTeam** » 08 September 06 7:13 pm

The problem with this is that you might have people who register and then don't log in but contine to browse without logging in. Some poeple like to leave cookies turned off for instance, so it's not unreasonable to think some new active members might not log in for a few months.

EcoDave