Good riddance. However, I'd give a new member a grace period to get acclimated before deleting them. A day is hardly sufficient time to browse through the posts, etc. Maybe a month? Newbies can be shy.

True.

But they only see about 1/3 the site without logging in. Logging in gets them the rest.

Hardly any point to registering and never logging in. You're still a guest that way.

I've just done a cull of the member list, deleting any member who never posted, and last logged in before about 400 days ago.

Some 900 odd gone.

But I think most of them were spammers who gave up trying here.

Or people who had a look, and then never came back.

Spammer activity is major at the moment, and it's had me looking at the list, since half of them register, but don't log in for a month or so.

I'm thinking about a more pro-active delete if not logged in the first time within a day policy.

Comments?

Quote from: The Bass Bagwhan on April 11, 2024, 12:47:05 AM

I'm in the other camp. I always italicise with quotes ( as distinct from internal thought, which I italicise without quotes).
I think the italics are an important although subtle indicator or reminder that there is no face-to -face interaction — no expressions or body language, which makes it different to normal dialogue.
But in the end, it's a stylistic choice. Do what you want, nothing is "wrong". I'll say it's a common convention to italicise electronic dialogue (phone, radio, intercom ... even telepathy in sci-fi.)

Is that a 3rd person thing?

Not necessarily, because in 1st Person you might have a fully formed thought such as, I think I'm going to kill him.

Compared to:

He kissed the back of her hand, and I think I'm going to kill him.

But as I said, it's not definitively laid out in CMOS or any other guide — although some offer suggestions. It's a personal stylistic choice, more often than not influenced by what we read, and each to their own. As an editor I see lots of variations that are very confusing for the reader, and for me using italics often provides immediate, visual clarity of what's going on. You can write brilliant prose but modern writing can still benefit from visual prompts — paragraph breaks are an obvious example.

But that's me. There is no right or wrong when it comes to style. Even CMOS is the Chicago Manual of Style and frequently sits on the fence regarding a lot of things.

I've never used italics, but I've seen a lot of Quora answers saying that's the way to do it.

As far as I'm concerned, it's just conversation. The fact it's over the phone, or text messages, or smoke signals doesn't make it any different to face to face conversation.

But plenty will disagree with me.

I've never used italics for a conversation that's spoken. Quotes work just fine. There's no confusion.

With email/text conversation, I use a different font or block it off with tabs. Same with a handwritten letter that would appear in a story. I've read some books with a box around it with time-stamps and to/from, but that seems superfluous.  

I'm in the other camp. I always italicise with quotes ( as distinct from internal thought, which I italicise without quotes).
I think the italics are an important although subtle indicator or reminder that there is no face-to -face interaction — no expressions or body language, which makes it different to normal dialogue.
But in the end, it's a stylistic choice. Do what you want, nothing is "wrong". I'll say it's a common convention to italicise electronic dialogue (phone, radio, intercom ... even telepathy in sci-fi.)

Is that a 3rd person thing?