Do you do anything about members with zero posts?

My forum has been getting a lot of members lately with zero posts. It doesn't really bother me, but I'd for them to contribute at least 1 post so I know they are actually human.

Anyways we send members a email after 30 days of inactivity, and we also delete accounts with zero posts after 180 days of inactivity. What do you do about members with zero posts?

 

After a significant amount of time, I would send out a friendly reminder of the forum if they opted to receive emaisl from us. If they did not opt for this or did not come back to the forum, then I would probably delete the account. People have varying opinions on how to handle those who do not post it seems.

 

This is how we handled this on our old script but the new one doesn't have those options yet.
We had the inactive reminder plugin that would ping users after X days, then every so often I'd just prune all inactive users for X days and zero post.

If they wanted to be on my sites they would come sign up again, I've never had a user email me asking why their account that they didn't use, was deleted.

 

Would send out a reminder after a while but never delete them, they may re-appear one day.

 

It doesn't bother me because I use one of the vBulletin mods that tells users to post if they have 0 posts - if not they get their account deleted. It works like a charm because it encourages the lurkers to post.

 

If someone has no posts but they visit fairly regularly, we leave them alone. If they're inactive for say, 6 months or so, I have a co-admin who likes to delete them - she likes to keep the forum tidy!

 

I haven't deleted any members that don't post, especially if I see them signing in to the site on a daily basis. Some members just join to lurk the boards. And I agree with that tactic, but what about sending the user an email before a deletion occurs?

 

Like I said, if they're logging in, no problem. But if they've been inactive for a long time, I think you can assume they're not interested. I'm personally happy to leave everyone, but she has these little tidy-up episodes! lol

 

Ya, I agree with that one. I wonder how low my member's count would be if I deleted users that haven't been around in 6 months or so. lol

 

I deleted all members with zero post before moving the General-Forums database over.

 

Oftentimes, spammers register and start spamming a few months or years later. Some make a couple of posts, then return a few months later and change their signature to something obviously spam-like. Some are using proxy servers to register multiple accounts (that becomes obvious when they're all posting the same thing or related stuff at the same time). People that register and don't post are somehow a bit suspicious to me.

 

I've seen quite a few accounts that register and don't do anything. I think it's bots that are confused because my initial usergroup is severely restricted after I got hit with a rash of visitor message spam (vBulletin) and didn't know about it for a while. They cannot do anything but post in exisiting threads or start new threads plus a small PM permission.

I'm considering restricting the new thread permissions too as that's how most of the spam comes in.

 

If they're obviously spam or bots, I delete them. I don't mind if they don't post, though, so I won't delete them otherwise. Sometimes it's people who just like lurking and reading, but have no interest in conversation.

 

I check them. I delete the Russian ones after having a rush of them come in with just spam. Most I leave for a b it to see if they will post. If they don't verify within a short period of time I will delete them. After reading this thread I will start to look to see if they have logged in since signing up. If they have then I will leave them alone.

James

 

The activation email of my forum actually contains a note telling the users that users pruning is activated so if they don't participate, their account will eventually be deleted after a week. I did it purposely because I still consider them spam especially those users who completed their profile with avatar and websites links and signatures yet without any post. ONE single post actually is enough even when they just say "hi". But if they don't they'd be deleted.

 

I just delete them off, once am sure they are spammers or never been active after the first log in. One can even discern that they are spammers with some of their usernames. I also deletes members that have zero posts, and just go on the homepage without doing nothing else. They are probably up to no good. Infact, before anyone can make a signature on my site now, they must have up to 50 posts.
However, if the community am working on is still small, I always leave them, and delete as real members join.

 

I remove them after 0 posts and inactive for 6 months. They can always join up again if they want to later on. It keeps the database and name base free for other members. I think it also helps remove spammers from the database.

 

No, nothing. Some members with 0 posts were frequent visitors anyway; I'm not going to force them to post. There did came a time when I started deleting accounts that had never logged in. In phpBB, you had to register and then login, it wasn't automatic. So those members who had never logged in in around 3 months or so had their accounts deleted. I notified them of that event weeks before I did the deletion so they could login.