Should we clean up the members list?

[scsmith42]

After reading Jim's thread about the "county search" feature, I took some time to review the members that are from my home county (Chatham). To my surprise, there are a significant number of members that have not signed on since the day that they signed up for NCWoodworker.

I'm wondering what the pro's and con's are of cleaning up the members list, and deleting some of these members that have not been active in 12 months, or active after their original registration date.

Thoughts?

Scott

 

[TracyP]

I have often thought about the same thing, I just wander how many of these are lurkers on a daily basis:dontknow:. It is certainly worth a good ole BOD discussion. For instance, my son 02ranger hasn't signed on in a long time but knows what is going on here as he monitors the site through the rss feeds. Just putting that out as an example.

 

[Travis Porter]

I thought that if they visited that would count as activity. Is that not the case?

 

[McRabbet]

At present, we have 3,395 registered users and 2,047 of them have 0 posts. However, there are many "lurkers" that may have registered a long time ago but they return to the site frequently. In scanning down through the "Top Posters" listing in AdminCP, you will see that there is a large group that has between 10 and 1 post, but once you page down to those with 0 posts and continue, you can see that many have recent activity even if they registered months ago. I paged down quite a way (they are listed from their date of registration backward in time) and there were many with activity this week yet no posts. Let's just leave them alone since we never know when someone may become active by actually posting.

 

[scsmith42]

I concur about not deleting a member who is active, but not posting.

However, there are a lot of registered members who have not logged into the site in over a year, and in some instances folks who have not logged in since the date that they registered.

These, to me, would be candidates for removal.

 

[ScottM]

My take is we leave them alone. When we talked to potential advertisers they want to know total number of members and total number of web hits. They really are members as we have no posting requirements.

Just my 2 cents.

 

[scsmith42]

My take is we leave them alone. When we talked to potential advertisers they want to know total number of members and total number of web hits. They really are members as we have no posting requirements.

Just my 2 cents.

Scott - in the back of my mind I was thinking that something like this could be the case. I concur with the logic; but for our own management we might want to pull stats that show us trending of members who have been online in the last 3 - 6 months, etc.

Scott

 

[Douglas Robinson]

This is a good discussion. Is there a way for use to email the "inactive" members? Many may have forgotten their user names/passwords, or have similar issues. Maybe we could have a get reacquainted drive to bring some of these people back. Thoughts?

 

[McRabbet]

I like Doug's suggestion for a "Get Reacquainted" drive. All of the e-maill addresses are available in the database -- I know we can access them one at a time in AdminCP, but it will take someone with Froglips or Bas' talent to build a routine to extract a group meeting certain criteria and then sending out an email to them. What we need to set is the filter criteria. I'd suggest that we try to reach people that registered at least six months ago and have not been on the site in at least three months, regardless of the number of posts they may have. That will include people like DL Ames, SteveD and Ray Martin, who we'd love to see back. I just looked -- DL was last on the site 10-17-08; SteveD on 2-25-09 and Ray Martin on 10-01-08 and they all had posted over 1,000 times.

BTW, Bas and Froglips can't see this forum; should we move it out to the Moderators and Administrators Forum or do you all want to wait untill we have consensus?

 

[Travis Porter]

I am ok with moving it out so the mods/admins can see it. It is a good thread, and has changed from one thought into something that could be more valuable.

Get reacquainted.... Hmmmmm.......

Rob, you know a few of the over 1000 posters that no longer come by. From what you know is there any feasability in getting them reengaged?

 

[McRabbet]

Rob, you know a few of the over 1000 posters that no longer come by. From what you know is there any feasability in getting them reengaged?

Hard to predict -- DL Ames dropped out after he retired from the Army and has worked part time at Woodcraft in Raleigh (I believe); Steve DeWeese lives near me and started a new business that has him working long hours to get it underway in a tough economic climate, but he is succeeding; and Ray Martin might come back if he knew our moderation was less black or white. Any of them mght come back, but it would be a coin flip.