Membership numbers query

[homeforsummer]

I've just been looking, as you do, to see which members had the highest postcounts. So well done to anyone who's posted 20k+ times

Anyway, I digress. I went to the back of the list for users with lowest postcount, and predictably it was full of members who'd joined today, or yesterday. I went another ten pages back. Still users on zero posts. Another 50. Still users on zero posts. I went into hundreds of pages back. Hundreds turned to thousands and still users who've never posted.

In the end, I'd gone back 4,376 pages of 20 users a page to find those who'd successfully posted once. With a quick calculation, that means roughly 87,500 users have never logged a single post. Or to put another way, of the roughly 116,000 registered users, 75% have never posted!

I found this post from 2006 and at that time, 71k out of 92k users had never posted, or 81%. So we're getting better, but 75% is still a huge number and doesn't take into account the number of posters who've only logged maybe one or two posts and then disappeared.

Anyway, I thought the information was interesting, but I do have a question.

Is there positive potential outcome for purging all non-posting users who registered more than, say, a year ago? Would the load on the server be less, perhaps, or the site run faster?

And on the same note, is there any reason why users couldn't be purged? Is there no option to do so, or are there legal reasons this wouldn't be possible?

Just interested 👍

 

[TB]

It's been brought up many times to remove inactive users, but it won't happen. They went through the steps to join, so why can't they stay? I'd be willing to be that on any given forum of this size, the participation rate is about the same (I could be completely wrong on this, of course). I'm sure that most are like I was - initially, I joined to be able to download GT4 videos. After digging around on the site after that, I was hooked. I could have very easily gone the other way - watched my videos and left. Then when I was interested in GT5 and came back for info and tried to log in and couldn't, I'd be pissed. I hope you see where I'm going with this.

 

[homeforsummer]

I understand completely, that's kind of the response I was after. I was just curious really. It's also based on the fact that some other internet services I've used (email accounts etc) close themselves after a period of inactivity, so I was wondering if a forum like this did similar 👍

EDIT: Incidentally, I did do a search for similar topics, but they were all along the lines of "zero post user" and variations thereof, and as such I didn't realise the topic had been covered much before.

 

[Jordan]

It's OK that you didn't find the previous threads, this has always been a topic that people seem to be very interested in. The phenomenon you are referring to is known as "participation inequality", an effect eloquently described by Web usability expert Jakob Nielsen. It's found in online communities of all types and sizes, from GTPlanet, to Wikipedia, YouTube, and even the blogosphere.

As I have said before, it doesn't make sense to delete or remove these inactive users. Nearly 80,000 of them have opted to receive email from the site. In other words, at any time, I can instantly be in contact with 80,000 people who have already shown enough interest in my site and the GT series to complete the registration form. As a webmaster, it's difficult to put a price on that. The other 30,000+ may also get email notifications from thread subscriptions, private message notifications, etc., hopefully bringing them back to the site even if they never posted a message. As you can see, it would be quite a shot in the foot to get rid of them. This is in addition to the fact that, from a technical standpoint, the "cost" per additional user is nothing more than a few bytes in the database. (Contrast this to email services, which must continue to process and store an inactive user's messages.)

 

[homeforsummer]

Ah, understood, thanks for the info Jordan. I never really thought of it from that standpoint - even though they're inactive users that's still a very large potential userbase who could potentially generate advertising revenue for the forum. I didn't know that it was such a small drain on resources either.

You're right though, I do find it interesting

 

[Felixthebat]

Hey guys, I just wanted to throw my two pennies out there. While I have been a registered user on gtp since April 25 2005, I have at times been unable to post or read the information here. I'm on active duty so it kinda limits my availibility. Over the last few months my obligations have been starting to wind down with just a few months left in the service. It amazes me that this community is so diverse and helpful towards fellow members to the point that without ever meeting any you, I still feel we have a small connection. Just wanted to know that even if you don't see some of our voices on here, we're still around.

 

[TB]

Felixthebat, you, sir, are the reason Jordan doesn't purge the inactive members. Inactive now doesn't mean inactive later.

Welcome, er, back, I guess.