16. Deactivation of accounts which are inactive for 6 months.

[John]

From this weeks Best of the Week Creators Digest 

FeverBee's "20 Things That Should Be Included In Your Online Community Website"

16.  Deactivation of accounts which are inactive for 6 months.

No can do.  We have no idea when a member last visited.

[Writer Chick {Diane}]

I can't wait for this feature to be implemented. Such an essential tool...

[Fabricio]

Just curiosity... Are you really going to eliminate the accounts from members that didn't visit your site in the last 6 months?

[Writer Chick {Diane}]

I plan to send them an email first asking why their account has been inactive for so long. I won't just yank the plug on them. But on the other hand, I don't want dead weight on my network. I want vibrant members who actually take PART in my site. What do I need with someone who doesn't even care about my network enough to log in once a week, or once every couple of weeks??? They're basically useless! Just a number in my total member count!

[Fabricio]

That useless number, if it is big, many times brings in more members.

We have different POV, that's ok! Thanks for replying! See you!

[Writer Chick {Diane}]

So which would I rather have?

Tons of members who never log on?

or

Fewer members who engage frequently and make the site look vibrant and exciting to visitors??

Hmmm...that is NOT a hard decision in my book.

[Adina]

I don't see the downside to a large membership list. Some members like to "lurk" and may still gain benefit from being a member. Some of my members RARELY join conversations, but they do like to submit photos and keep up to date and read what's going on on the site. It doesn't cause you any more work to have these members that never participate visibly. That's my POV.

[Patrick Chappelle]

I agree Diane, especially when we now have to pay for storage space. I'm not paying to have member content sit around and no participation.

[M.Tariq Malik]

But what you do with the content of the member if the such member has a lot of contributions like in blog post, groups etc. so i think this is not a fair way to deactivate the account with the his/here data. By doing this we will lose the lot of nice & important content from our network. so think about it..

In my case i have the network of my university related students. http://www.vustudents.net . where members contributes a lot in their studies time but after completion their studies may be they do not give a lot of time so it is not a fair way that we deactivate their accounts with data..

Think about it please..

http://www.vustudents.net

[TJ @ jQueryHelp]

I have a "Last Active" app on my site that shows the last time/date a member was active, on their Profile page. The data is stored in an external database. I see how Ning suspends accounts with a removeByUser function, and I could probably periodically call this for inactive users I could get from the database based on some time criteria. But it would be a challenge to test this!

I think I'll wait for Ning to do it! :-)

[Faiz]

Where can i get this "Last Active" app
it would be great if i can show the last time/date a member was active, on their Profile +
pls guide me how to do it

[TJ @ jQueryHelp]

It is part of an app that you can read about, here:
http://jqueryhelp.ning.com/forum/topics/our-instant-message-im-program

If you're not already a member, apply and I'll approve you as soon as I can.

[TJ @ jQueryHelp]

That's fine, Ayla. Thanks for joining! We are happy to have you as a member of our site!