Purging users

I know I've been slacking on my job lately (crazy life lol) but I started going thru my assigned bit of the user alphabet and found only a handful of A's in the lot. Looks like someone purged a buttload of people, probably people with 0 posts, although I know there were some legit users that were maybe lurking in that lot and they're not in there anymore - my friend Adrianna, who got banned once erroneously before, among them. For that matter, the B's are looking pretty skimpy too.

Do we have some new banning policy I don't know about, or did someone get an itchy ban hammer finger?

:eek:

lately i've been banning many people but i don't think it was me!!

Looking into it further, looks like everyone is gone that had 0 posts through the whole alphabet, save for the newest members. That was some purge, which is why I was wondering if maybe we enacted something that got rid of inactive accounts or something. It does make it easier to spot the spammer now, but wow...a lot of folks are gone.

I think it's because anyone with less than 5 posts does not show up in the members list :) The ones you see showing up with zero posts, probably registered before the changes to the usergroups were made maybe?

blackie I thought of that, but one fellow I did see with 0 posts just registered today. So I stumped as to where all our older, lurking posters have gone to.
Merged Post:
Ok, still trying to figure this out (lol)...some new users that just registered today, come up as "board members" and they will show up too when you look at the Members list on the board itself. However, a user I remember from my assigned section with no posts but checked out before, AnimateTed, I can only find by searching in the mod panel for him. I don't see him in the Board's memberlist, and his usergroup is New Members rather than board member. So I'll have to look for a few more people and see if they're really gone or not.

I guess the New Member thing might be part of the shielding people from potentially bad profiles until so many posts (which is good) are made HOWEVER, I don't understand then why some new (and obvious spam accounts) are coming under board members and are visible to anyone surfing our lists of members, even when they have 0 posts. Just color me confused :confused:

In other words, people that clearly joined way before these measures have their profiles hidden, while other people just joining today slip through. I guess that's why I'm confused!

I actually did some massive pruning...and I hate to say it but there were some profiles who had 0 posts and hadnt been active for about 5 years so those got pruned. In order for me to keep an eye out for spammers and suspicious accounts I had to do it. I did scrub the list of accounts that had zero posts (whcih was my main concern as many were spam accounts) and it took me a few hours to prune the users so that actual users didnt get pruned in the process.

Every day I spend about 30 min to 1 hour deleting spam accounts and occasionally an actual user will get deleted. Rest assured Im doing my best to scrub the accounts so that actual users dont get pruned

EDIT: There was an option that was not enabled on the New Members usergroup to be visible on the memberslist. That has been fixed

ok Manny, I was wondering if that happened. Happily though I did find my friend's account still intact. She just isn't showing on the member list now cuz she's classified "new member" :) I do understand the effort and it does make it easier to spot spam accounts now. Thanks for filling me in :D

Chris here...

"MannysCollectibles, post: 38562" said:

I actually did some massive pruning...and I hate to say it but there were some profiles who had 0 posts and hadnt been active for about 5 years so those got pruned. In order for me to keep an eye out for spammers and suspicious accounts I had to do it. I did scrub the list of accounts that had zero posts (whcih was my main concern as many were spam accounts) and it took me a few hours to prune the users so that actual users didnt get pruned in the process.

Every day I spend about 30 min to 1 hour deleting spam accounts and occasionally an actual user will get deleted. Rest assured Im doing my best to scrub the accounts so that actual users dont get pruned

EDIT: There was an option that was not enabled on the New Members usergroup to be visible on the memberslist. That has been fixed

Great stuff, MannyC, thanks for everything you're doing - I'm noticing a lot less spam on the forums, so clearly the hard work that you and everyone is putting in is making a big difference! :thumbsup:

Take care... :)