This is post 100,000.

Not sure why I looked exactly now, but I did.

Pretty big milestone.

Thanks to everyone who's been posting here for getting us this far.

 

So it looks like at some point I might need to cull registrations which never log in. Have to wait and see. That's another question for sometime. Do I cull registrations where no posts have been made, and no-one has logged in beyond a certain time frame? Not essential to answer now, but will become a question since I cant tell a spam registration immediately now and so are not deleting them.

There are 1736 members currently.  Of those, about 950 have never posted a message.

Some may be lurkers, but lurkers tend to log in, especially if they want to read content from areas that require login or membership.

Checking some of those 950 at random show that some of them have not logged in again since they registered.  I'd say if someone registered in 2018 or 2019 and hasn't logged in since registering, they are probably not coming back.  Maybe they are reading without logging in but it seems doubtful.

I know some forums purge after twelve months of inactivity; that is, no posts or logins.  I had that happen twice on another writers' forum.  They purged without notification either.  So it was like you get busy, go back and, poof!, you have no account and have to start over.  That forum is long gone now.

So, probably the best thing would be to set an inactivity period.  A year is okay.  After six months of inactivity, send an eMail--this can probably be automated--saying we miss you and want you back and inviting them to come back.  After a year, send an eMail warning them that due to inactivity their account is subject to deletion, but all they have to do to keep their account is login or send you an eMail.

If there is no response, or the eMail bounces, you can probably purge them.

Of course, before implementing any of that, change the terms of service to warn people that their accounts are subject to deletion after a year of inactivity.

Charge $1 to join.

Will cut out 99.99% of spam.

In light of the amount of spam getting through, I've finally looked seriously at a part of the forum which is fairly complex.

And made some changes.

They shouldn't affect most members.

Those affected will be those who haven't made a post yet.

Their ability to do anything except post has been removed. This includes not being able to PM. Their posts will go into immediate moderation. And until that post has been approved, they can't even update their profile.

Once an approved post has been made, they get most functionality again.

Essentially I've redefined the standard registered member as unreliable until proved otherwise.

This will affect genuine members who for whatever reason hasn't posted yet, but their first post should be approved, and then they'll be fine.

Let me know if any functionality has been lost, in case I goofed somewhere.

The changes allow me to scale up functions if any spam still bypasses the new change. In that case, I'll need to scale back on those below 10 posts, but hopefully I won't have to.