Pruning users - why?
 

Why do people prune users who haven't visited in X number of months/years or have a very low post count or whatever? Does this speed up the forum or otherwise improve things? I just don't see the point.

<i>What would be the point of keeping them if they're permanently inactive?</i>

What's the point of going to the effort of removing them?

Hehe...I like you.:D

I guess I just don't see the purpose in keeping the information of someone who visits once and never comes back. It's a waste of space and resources. Does that make sense? It's like keeping the phone number of someone you exchanged numbers with for the sole purpose of niceties...you're not really interested, but you do it to be polite.

Okay, I might see the point in pruning someone who signs up, posts once, and then vanishes. But it's not a big point for me. To use your phone number analogy, that phone number that you have will get in the way of other more useful stuff in many cases. Either you're running out of spaces in the S or R section of your paper phone book or you have to take the time to scroll past their name and number in an electronic address book in order to get to the person that you were looking for. But in a database, you don't even see those people. In doing searches, what does it add when looking for a member? Maybe a nanosecond or less (picoseconds maybe?) per member.

And in the case of someone who had a number of posts but has vanished for whatever reason, they may come back. I've seen this in off-road forums where people will sell their rig because of real life circumstances and then get back into the hobby years later when times are better. They'll come back to the same forum and want to use their old account.

I guess it doesn't matter either way and it's just personal preference of the admin, I just don't get it.

<i>Like you said, it's a matter of personal preference. Another factor may be the kind of board you run...yours is different than mine.</i>

The only usergroup I prune on a regular basis are the users awaiting activation group. Nobody can post (view my database) unless they activate their account so anyone who's account is still pending has their account deleted. As for members who have posted once (and maybe not at all) they are left alone.